LA director and architect Liam Young describes Planet City, commissioned by The National Gallery of Victoria Melbourne, as both “an extraordinary image of tomorrow and an urgent examination of environmental questions facing us today.”

Liam Young: “Humans dominate the planet. As a consequence of hundreds of years of colonization, globalization, and never-ending economic extraction and expansionism we have remade the world from the scale of the cell to the tectonic plate.

“But what if we radically reversed this planetary sprawl? What if we reached a global consensus to retreat from our vast network of cities and entangled supply chains into one hyper-dense metropolis housing the entire population of the earth?

“Planet City explores the productive potential of extreme densification, where 10 billion people surrender the rest of the planet to a global wilderness.

“[The film] eschews the techno-utopian fantasy of designing a new world order. This is not a neo-colonial master plan to be imposed from a singular seat of power. It is a work of critical architecture – a speculative fiction grounded in statistical analysis, research, and traditional knowledge.

“It is a collaborative work of multiple voices and cultures supported by an international team of acclaimed environmental scientists, theorists, and advisors. In Planet City we see that climate change is no longer a technological problem, but rather an ideological one, rooted in culture and politics.”
 

Client: NGV Melbourne
Senior Curator of Contemporary Design and Architecture: Ewan McEoin

Director: Liam Young
VFX Supervisor: Alexey Marfin
VFX: Case Miller, Aman Sheth, Vivian Komati, Yucong Wang
Lead Researcher: Case Miller
Researcher: Pierce Myers
Costume Director/Producer Ane Crabtree
Main Costume Assistant: Courtney Mitchell
Costume Assistant: Ela Erdogan
Costume Artists: Holly McQuillian (Zero Waste Weavers), Aneesa Shami (High Altitude Bot Herder), Yeohlee Teng (Code Talker), Courtney Mitchell (Beekeeper), Ane Crabtree (Nomadic Worker, Algae Diver, Drone Shepard)
Fiber Artist: Janice Arnold
Mask Artists: Liam Young (High Altitude Bot Herder, Code Talker, Algae Diver, Drone Shepard), Zac Monday (Zero Waste Weaver)
Narrative Consultant: Jennifer Chen
Performers: David Freeland Jr, AJ and Miguel Alejandro Lopez, Joy Brown of Jacob Jonas The Company

Original Score: Matthew Barnes “Forest Swords”
Vocals: EMEL