> ## Content Index
> Fetch the complete content index at: https://www.killscreen.com/llms.txt
> Use this file to discover other available public pages before exploring further.

# Carlos Navarro's Penjing World puts miniature life on massive scale
- URL: https://www.killscreen.com/carlos-navarros-penjing-world-puts-miniature-life-on-massive-scale/
- Published: 2026-11-11T17:00:00.000Z
- Updated: 2026-11-11T17:00:00.000Z
- Description: The audio-reactive Gaussian-splat landscape ran in Times Square
- Author: Jamin Warren
- Tags: Carlos Navarro, Gaussian Splatting, Unreal Engine, Public Art, Times Square, Installation, Generative Art, News, #radar-item

How do we draw more attention to the smallest of the small? LA-based architectural designer Carlos Navarro may have an answer with *Penjing World*. In it, he places potted plants inside scans of the LA Metro's monumental architecture to highlight how changing scale and perspective forces contemplation not always granted to our plant friends. Captured as Gaussian splats and set inside 3D scans of LA Metro spaces, the greenery lives in Unreal Engine and responds to sound. 

[Navarro's recap of the final afternoon](https://www.instagram.com/p/De7t6yOkkIg/?ref=killscreen.com) caught the best version of it: despite the general lack of greenery in Times Square, the rain and haze spilled its bursts of light beyond the screens and onto the streets. New York in the rain is the best.

0:00 

/1:18 

1× 

From **Penjing World v2.0*, documented at the Portal exhibition. Silent excerpt; [the full three minutes with sound is on Vimeo](https://vimeo.com/1180341995?ref=killscreen.com).

Penjing comes from the old Chinese art of miniatures: trees, rocks, and buildings are constructed in a tray until we accede to the idea of a tiny world at the small scale. [Navarro's project page](https://carlosnavarro.io/penjing-world?ref=killscreen.com) subtitles his version "Plausible Miniature Urban Landscapes through Gaussian Splatting," so he's asking the opposite. Instead of small worlds constructed grandly, he captures small plants and then fills enormous halls with the flora until the voids are filled. In that way, architecture is no longer the biggest kid in the room. Then a soundtrack composed in TouchDesigner modulates the splat fields live in Unreal Engine, warping and recoloring the scene until the world shatters and reforms.

The piece began as process studies for a Gaussian splatting workshop at Woodbury University's School of Architecture in October 2025, part of (my board game buddy!) Michael "Caco" Peguero's *Applications & Applications* lecture series. It showed later that month as *Penjing World v2.0*, extended into VR, at the Portal exhibition at Resin Gallery in Hermosa Beach. The Times Square run came via DISIVA's [GIANT SIGNALS](https://www.artrabbit.com/events/giant-signals?ref=killscreen.com), which put 44 artistic practices on the screens during Armory Show week. Navarro's next version, v3.0, divides the work in two: a VR participant moving through the world, and a projected live feed so the crowd watches it answer them and the music.

Times Square is a fitting location for games work as it was a location for games before games had locations; the arcades that adorned it in the 1980s got [their own photographic elegy in our pages](https://www.killscreen.com/how-eight-year-old-photographer-captured-seedy-glory-days-times-square-arcades-1983/). Getting a game engine back in those spaces by running an enormous garden at billboard scale is a nice nod and a call back: the neighborhood that taught games to be public spectacle getting the spectacle back, at architectural size.

![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/25/84/2584b75d-4bd6-4cce-8259-f1d1c65abbb5/content/images/2026/11/penjing-world-frame-15s.jpg)

![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/25/84/2584b75d-4bd6-4cce-8259-f1d1c65abbb5/content/images/2026/11/penjing-world-frame-30s.jpg)

![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/25/84/2584b75d-4bd6-4cce-8259-f1d1c65abbb5/content/images/2026/11/penjing-world-frame-75s.jpg)

Stills from **Penjing World v2.0*. Frames via Carlos Navarro on Vimeo.

Game engines keep leaving the console for the street, and Killscreen is usually standing under the screen when they do. The free newsletter catches the next one.

[Get the free newsletter ](https://www.killscreen.com/start/?ref=radar-cta)