Kew Carbon Garden

Carbon Garden

Kew Garden | 2025

The Carbon Garden explores the essential role of carbon in sustaining life on Earth, highlights the scale and urgency of the climate crisis, and reveals the capacity of the natural world to help address it. We designed a series of permanent interpretive stations, each corresponding to a thematic area within the garden, that use illustrated infographics to explain carbon’s role in nature and how excess carbon in the atmosphere is driving climate change. A simple black dot serves as a unifying visual motif throughout, representing carbon. In places it is printed in relief or punched through the panels, creating tactile moments and a subtle visual porosity. A restrained, neutral colour palette allows the interpretation to sit harmoniously within the surrounding landscape. The infographics were also animated for display on iPads, providing an additional layer of interpretation.

The supporting frame system reinterprets Kew’s existing graphic language, creating a lighter, more open structural armature that introduces depth and spatial layering while integrating seamlessly into the garden setting. The graphics are printed on durable Tricoya panels. Using Zubr’s virtual reality binoculars, visitors can peer inside the historic 250-year-old Turner's Oak to witness how carbon is captured through photosynthesis and stored within the tree before being sequestered into the soil below, offering an immersive insight into one of nature’s most powerful carbon storage systems.

In developing the exhibition, we collaborated with:
Seeing Things: Graphic Design
Palma Studio: AV Software Design
Polly Richards: Content Development