Ursula K. Le Guin was a celebrated author best known for her speculative fiction. The Word for World: The Maps of Ursula K. Le Guin is the first public exhibition of her maps of imagined places, and the first to connect her worldbuilding with architecture. Enquiring into the relationship between the world and its representation, the exhibition and public program recontextualize the maps as a world into which visitors from the general public enter. It interprets important architectures and places in her work, such as the house, the archipelago, the forest, the mountain, and the valley, showing how each place is both a world in itself and in relation to each other. The exhibition design is inspired by the diverse influences on Le Guin’s worldview to propose a model for reciprocity, harmony, and sustainability between built and natural environments. The exhibition is a creative engagement with her imaginary worlds and an invitation to consider how to rebuild our own.

Ursula K. Le Guin (1929–2018) was a celebrated author whose body of work includes 23 novels, 12 volumes of short stories, 11 volumes of poetry, 13 children’s books, five essay collections, and four works of translation. The breadth and imagination of her work earned her six Nebula Awards, seven Hugo Awards, and Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers Association (SFWA)’s Grand Master, along with the PEN/Malamud and many other awards. In 2014 she was awarded the National Book Foundation Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters, and in 2016 joined the short list of authors to be published in their lifetimes by the Library of America.

Sarah Shin is a writer, publisher, researcher, and curator. She is a founder of Silver Press, the feminist publisher, and Spiral House, exploring poetry, art, and science; Ignota, a publishing and curatorial house that closed in 2024; New Suns literary festival at the Barbican Centre; and Standard Deviation, a multidisciplinary collective. She is the editor and publisher of the following books by Ursula K. Le Guin: The Carrier Bag Theory of Fiction (Ignota, 2019); Space Crone (Silver, 2022); Steering the Craft (Silver, 2024); and So Far, So Good (Spiral House, 2025). Shin is editor of Carrier Bag Fictions (Spector, 2021). A frequent speaker at and curator of public events exploring literature, arts, and science fiction, she holds degrees in literature and worked across the architecture and urbanism list at Verso. She is a board director of the McKenna Academy, which cultivates harmony with nature through engagement with ethnobotany and Indigenous wisdom.

Theo Downes-Le Guin is the literary executor for author Ursula K. Le Guin and heads the Ursula K. Le Guin Foundation. Through programs such as an annual prize for fiction, the Foundation continues Le Guin’s legacy of supporting writers and readers of science fiction, fantasy, literary fiction, and poetry. He also consults on adaptations of Le Guin’s work for screen and stage. Downes-Le Guin founded a contemporary art gallery in Portland, Oregon, curating more than 80 exhibitions in the gallery, art fairs, museums and online. He holds degrees in art history and applied social research methods and has served on various not-for-profit boards including Literary Arts.

Harriet Jennings is a curator and cultural producer. She is the public program and exhibitions curator at the Architectural Association, recently co-organizing exhibitions including Ripple Ripple Rippling (2024), Portraits of a Practice: The Life and Work of MJ Long (2023), Chronograms of Architecture (2023), and events series such as New Standards (2022). Jennings is part of EYESORE, a cross-disciplinary collective that communicates experiences of the built environment and amplifies voices striving for spatial justice.

Standard Deviation is a multidisciplinary collective exploring the coincidence of psychic, geometric, and inhabited spaces. It includes Federico Campagna, philosopher and lecturer in World-Building at Architectural Association; sonic dramaturg MJ Harding, artist Sammy Lee, architect Mark Lowe, writer and curator Sarah Shin, and architect and artist Rain Wu. Standard Deviation is designing The Word for World.

The Architectural Association School of Architecture (AA) was founded in 1847 with the aspiration of “promoting and affording facilities for the study of architecture for the public benefit.” As a school, membership organization and registered charity, it has a rich history of redefining and expanding the definition of architecture through engaging with the wider art and design world, as well as the public. Through its freely accessible public program of events and exhibitions, the AA provides a uniquely innovative, collaborative and creative space that has brought together architects and creative thinkers such as Po Shun Leong, Lina Ghotmeh, Mark Fisher, Zaha Hadid, Do Ho Suh, Eduardo Paolozzi, and Rem Koolhaas, making it a key destination within the global architecture and art world. The AA strives to explore the intersection between architecture and other creative disciplines in a way that encourages new thinking that challenges the status quo.