Project

In Plain Sight
An immersive installation in the US Pavilion at the 16th International Architecture Exhibition of La Biennale di Venezia.

The Earth at night, as seen in the "Black Marble."

The absence of light does not always mean the absence of people.

Night View: Dark yet populated places are dispersed across the globe.

Day View: Dark yet populated places are dispersed across the globe.

The presence of light does not always mean the presence of people.

There are many kinds of bright locations with very few inhabitants.

In Plain Sight by Diller Scofidio + Renfro, Laura Kurgan, Robert Gerard Pietrusko with Columbia Center for Spatial Research at the 2018 U.S. Pavilion. Photo © Tom Harris. Courtesy of the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and the University of Chicago.

In Plain Sight at the 2018 U.S. Pavilion. Photo © Tom Harris.

In Plain Sight presents anomalies in population distribution seen in nighttime satellite imagery of Earth and census grid counts produced by governments worldwide — revealing places with bright lights and no people and places with people and no lights—thus, challenging our assumptions about geographies of belonging and exclusion. The project was tasked with interrogating the relationship between citizenship and the built environment at the scale of the globe, where the primacy of the individual, the city, and even the nation drops away and is replaced by data: electricity, trade routes, migratory shifts, and the flow of capital, goods and people. The installation is a collaboration between Diller Scofidio + Renfro, Laura Kurgan, and Robert Gerard Pietrusko with the Center for Spatial Research, and will be on view from May 26 through November 25, 2018.

The installation is conceived and designed for Dimensions of Citizenship, the US Pavilion at the 16th International Architecture Exhibition of La Biennale di Venezia, commissioned by the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and The University of Chicago.

View the full project video here.

Project Team

Name	Project Role
Diller Scofidio + Renfro	Principal
Contact Diller Scofidio + Renfro
Laura Kurgan	Principal
Contact Laura Kurgan Laura Kurgan is a Professor of Architecture at the Graduate School of Architecture Planning and Preservation at Columbia University, where she directs the Center for Spatial Research, the Master's in Science in Computational Design Practices, and the Visual Studies curriculum.
Robert Gerard Pietrusko	Principal
Contact Robert Gerard Pietrusko Research Associate in 2009
Grga Basic	Research Associate
Contact Grga Basic Grga Basic is an architect and Associate Research Scholar at the Center for Spatial Research. His research interests include critical and narrative cartography, and metrics of human impacts on Earth’s ecosystems.
Dare Brawley	Research Associate
Contact Dare Brawley Dare Brawley is assistant director of the Center for Spatial Research. Her work focuses on the interactions of technology, urban governance, and spatial politics using methods from critical urban studies and geographic information systems.