Climate change is one of the most documented subjects of our time. Yet despite scientific reports, satellite imagery and constant media coverage, glaciers remain remote for most people, making it difficult to relate their gradual transformation to everyday urban life.
Dayuan Design, a Shanghai-based spatial and exhibition design studio, set out to narrow that distance through Glacier Project. Developed in collaboration with ocean conservation nonprofit N.O.C., the installation translates the relationship between glaciers, oceans and cities into an immersive spatial experience.
Through space, sound, movement, materiality and participation, the installation gives physical form to the relationship between glaciers, oceans, cities and human activity.
Turning polar landscapes into immersive spatial experiences
Installed at Shanghai Jing’an Kerry Centre under the theme Resonance of the Extremes, the project draws together glaciers, oceans and cities into a single spatial narrative. Instead of recreating the polar environment literally, Dayuan Design distilled its underlying relationships into an installation that could be entered, explored and physically experienced.
Nine suspended geometric forms evoke fragments of glacial terrain, their faceted geometry inspired by the visible and hidden mass of an iceberg. Viewed from a distance, the installation appears stable and complete. Once visitors step inside, however, the installation begins to respond to their actions.
Beneath each suspended form hangs a simple mechanical element that visitors can pull. The action causes the structures above to contract and distort, turning a seemingly static composition into one that visibly responds to human intervention.
Without relying on digital interfaces or projected graphics, the installation creates an immediate relationship between action and consequence, encouraging visitors to consider how individual actions ripple through larger environmental systems.
The experience continues to evolve with changing daylight and weather. As sunlight moves across the installation, reflections and shadows continually reshape its appearance. Rain introduces another dimension. Water passes through the structure before falling onto metal surfaces, creating subtle sounds and shifting reflections that become part of the installation’s changing atmosphere.
Sustainable exhibition design beyond materials
Recycled metals, discarded waterproof fabric and modular construction form the physical foundation of the project. Its environmental thinking also extends beyond the exhibition itself. Modular construction allows it to be dismantled, transported and reassembled rather than discarded after a single installation.
That same thinking continues in Flowing Glacier, a tabletop work derived from the larger installation. Here, the vast scale of glacial change is distilled into a contemplative object that invites repeated observation within everyday life.
Using backflow incense, the piece visualises the slow downward movement of smoke through a translucent glass form, recalling meltwater flowing through ice or cold air descending across a glacier. Its slow, continuous movement mirrors the gradual retreat of glaciers, compressing a vast environmental process into a quiet, intimate experience.
The glacial form is crafted in traditional Chinese liuli glass, bringing a historic craft into a contemporary environmental narrative.
Designing perception through space, sound and participation
Beyond the outdoor installation, the exhibition expands the narrative through film, artefacts and immersive environments. Visitors move through a series of spaces that gradually reveal different dimensions of the project.
Windows frame both the installation and the surrounding city, visually dissolving the boundary between urban life and distant polar landscapes. Artefacts associated with life in extreme environments introduce personal histories and lived experience. At the same time, an enclosed sound chamber replaces the city noise with the crackling of glaciers, the flow of meltwater, and the sounds of polar ecosystems.
The exhibition gradually widens its focus beyond the glaciers themselves. Oceans, cities and human activity are woven into the narrative, illustrating how environmental change extends far beyond the polar regions.
Long after visitors leave the exhibition, its central message remains: the story of the glacier is inseparable from the systems that shape life far beyond the polar regions.
Located at Shanghai Jing’an Kerry Centre in Shanghai, China, the 160m2 Glacier Project was built by Dihua Art Technology (Shanghai) and Shanghai Mingshuntu Enterprise Management.