The Overview Effect at Berlin Art Week: Anna Carnick and Johannes Schön on Designing Connection

This September, during Berlin Art Week 2026, The Foundry, a cultural space by Bocci located within Wilhelm Hallen, will present The Overview Effect, a new group exhibition exploring our relationship to the world around us and the interconnected systems that bind us together.

Commissioned by Bocci and curated by American-born, Berlin-based writer and curator Anna Carnick, the exhibition takes its title from the profound shift in perspective astronauts describe when viewing Earth from space: borders disappear, the planet’s beauty and fragility come sharply into focus, and our shared existence becomes impossible to ignore. From this starting point, The Overview Effect asks a timely question: Must we leave Earth to understand how intertwined our fates are?

Bringing together an international group of designers and studios from across the globe, the exhibition approaches that question through materials, objects and spatial experiences that consider care, healing, nature and human connection. Exhibition designer Chris Leeuw extends the curatorial premise into the architecture of the show, creating an interconnected environment intended to be experienced less as a collection of discrete works than as a constellation of relationships. For Bocci, the exhibition also reflects a broader ambition for The Foundry: to create a space where design can shift not only what we see, but how we see. Following the success of last year’s Crafting Community, The Overview Effect continues The Foundry’s growing cultural program within Berlin’s historic Wilhelm Hallen.

Ahead of the exhibition’s opening, we spoke with curator Anna Carnick and Johannes Schön, Bocci’s Director of Brand and Cultural Strategy, about the thinking behind The Overview Effect, the role design can play in reconnecting us to one another and to the natural world, and why a change in perspective feels particularly meaningful now.

How did the idea for The Overview Effect first come about?

Anna Carnick, Curator: A few years ago, I read Samantha Harvey’s beautiful novel Orbital and became fascinated by the Overview Effect—the profound shift in perspective astronauts describe when they see Earth from space. I was struck by the idea that a shift in vantage point could so radically change our understanding of the world: as man-made borders fall away, our interconnectedness comes into focus, and the planet appears at once extraordinarily beautiful and incredibly fragile.

That idea felt especially resonant at a moment so often defined by division and absolutes, and inspired me to explore the ways art and design can offer their own kind of shift in perspective here on Earth—revealing relationships we often overlook and encouraging us to reconsider our place within a larger, interconnected whole.

Johannes Schön, Director of Brand and Cultural Strategy: When we began talking with Anna about a second exhibition, she proposed the concept of The Overview Effect. When she described the profound shift in perspective astronauts experience when seeing the Earth from space, I was immediately moved. It felt very timely.

At the time, the Artemis II mission was taking shape, and there was something remarkable about thinking about humanity once again looking at the Earth from beyond it. So much around us is in transition: technology, politics, culture and our understanding of the world, yet one reality remains: we are on this extraordinary planet, together.

For us, the idea offered a way of putting things into perspective: a reminder of where we are, alongside the extraordinary diversity of humanity and all the ways we think, make, live and express ourselves. This became the starting point for our conversation with Anna, and we all felt that it was a timely and meaningful idea to continue exploring together. The exhibition grew out of that conversation.

Archaic Clock by Clara de Tezanos

What were you looking for when selecting the designers for the exhibition? Was there a common thread you wanted all the works to share?

Anna Carnick: The concept came first, and from there I looked for artists, designers, and works that could approach the theme from very different points of view. All of the participating practices respond, in their own way, to the central question posed by the exhibition: Must we leave Earth to understand how intertwined our fates are?

Some use unexpected materials, from microalgae and silkworm cocoons to wildfire ash, to reconsider our relationship with the natural world. Others play with scale and perspective, or explore ideas of care and collaboration. What connects them is less a particular aesthetic than a shared sense of interdependence—a recognition that we exist in relationship with one another and with the world around us, and that those connections can be a source of care, strength, and ingenuity.

Johannes Schön: Anna was invited to curate the exhibition, so the selection was very much part of her curatorial process. From Bocci’s side, we wanted to create the conditions for a broad range of practices and perspectives to come together.

We were particularly interested in work that exists between disciplines rather than fitting neatly within one. We naturally felt an affinity with practices that move between disciplines. Much of what we do at Bocci begins with open-ended experimentation, without a fixed disciplinary category. We are interested in that space where art, architecture and design begin to overlap, because it is often where unexpected ideas emerge.

Black Sheep Cocoon Cabinet by Marlène Huissoud

The exhibition brings together designers from very different countries and disciplines. How did you approach creating a dialogue between such different practices?

Johannes Schön: The diversity is part of the dialogue. We didn’t want to impose a single language on the works, but to allow their differences to remain visible. Anna’s approach creates relationships between practices from very different cultural and disciplinary contexts. Bringing them together physically allows those relationships to be discovered through scale, material, space and simply through proximity.

Did the concept of the exhibition come first, or did it develop through discovering and selecting the designers and their work?

Johannes Schön: It developed through conversation. We had a starting point, but the idea continued to evolve through our discussions with Anna and through the artists and designers she brought into the exhibition. We value a curatorial process that remains open enough for the work to change the original idea.

Elisa Strozyk

How did The Foundry itself influence the curatorial approach and the way the works are presented?

Anna Carnick: This is my second year curating an exhibition at The Foundry, and I’m very grateful to the team at Bocci for inviting me back to work within this extraordinary space. I approach curating as a form of storytelling, and the expansive, evocative industrial character of The Foundry allowed me to develop the narrative through multiple works, scales, and perspectives. There’s also a wonderful dialogue that emerges between the raw industrial architecture of the former iron casting factory and these expertly crafted contemporary objects.

In terms of the presentation, our wonderful exhibition designer, Chris Leeuw, conceived a spatial design that responds directly to the theme, using soft, semi-transparent paper to create interconnected pathways between works and a sense of permeability between spaces, dissolving conventional boundaries. Echoing astronauts’ view of Earth from space, he also designed a darkened entrance that opens dramatically onto The Foundry’s incredible setting. It sets the tone for what follows—a series of encounters with works that play with perspective, materiality, and more.

Johannes Schön: The Foundry has a very particular presence. Its industrial architecture, scale and history are impossible to ignore, and we wanted to work with that rather than conceal it.

It also reinforces the idea of physical encounter. You move through the building and encounter very different objects and practices in relation to one another. The architecture becomes part of the conversation rather than simply a backdrop.

Christine Jacobs

What do you hope visitors will take away from The Overview Effect after experiencing the exhibition?

Johannes Schön: We hope it encourages people to slow down and look closely.

Looking at these artists and designers, I was struck by how each of them represents a world of their own. Together, they offer many perspectives on the world around us, on materials and making, and on how each of us sees and interprets our surroundings.

At a time when so much of our experience is mediated through a screen, there is something very powerful about being physically present with an object and with other people. Perhaps the exhibition can simply remind us of the richness and wonder that exists in that direct encounter, and of the worlds that exist within each of us.

Anna Carnick: There’s a beautiful quote by poet and activist Andrea Gibson that has stayed with me throughout this project: “I know there is medicine in knowing how much we don’t know. I know there are answers in being awestruck.”

That sense of wonder runs through the exhibition. The participating artists and designers invite us to look—and look again—at materials, objects, and our relationships to one another and our planet. I hope visitors leave looking at the world around us with fresh eyes—with a renewed sense of curiosity and an appreciation of how much connects us.

I believe wonder can lead to a sense of possibility, even hope. For me, hope isn’t passive optimism; it’s a form of agency, the willingness to imagine differently and to recognize that we each have a role in shaping our collective future. Through their ingenuity and imagination, the artists and designers in this exhibition reveal possibilities we might otherwise overlook.

The final work in the exhibition, in fact, offers visitors a chance to share their own vision for the future. Chilean design studio gt2P’s interactive mural Shhh the Hope Keeper invites visitors to anonymously pen a wish for the future of our planet, contributing to a growing collective archive of hope. After encountering the exhibition’s many perspectives on our world and our place within it, visitors are invited to pause, if only for a moment, to consider what they hope for, and the future we might shape together.

The Overview Effect is on view at The Foundry, Wilhelm Hallen, Berlin, from September 4–13, 2026, as part of Berlin Art Week and Hallen 07. More information HERE.