The British Council and its commissioned curators today announce further details of the British Pavilion at the 19th International Architecture Exhibition of La Biennale di Venezia in 2025. The exhibition, GBR – Geology of Britannic Repair, investigates how architecture can reverse the destructive impacts of colonial systems of geological extraction through emergent practices of architectural repair.
The exhibition is a unique UK-Kenya collaboration between a multi-disciplinary team of curators – Kabage Karanja and Stella Mutegi of Nairobi-based architecture studio Cave_bureau; and UK-based curator and writer Owen Hopkins and academic Professor Kathryn Yusoff. The Great Rift Valley – a geological formation that runs from southern Turkey through Palestine, the Red Sea to Ethiopia, Kenya and Mozambique – provides the exhibition’s geographical, geological and conceptual focus.
Emerging from the “rift”, the exhibition comprises a series of installations by Cave_bureau, Mae-ling Lokko and Gustavo Crembil, Thandi Loewenson, and the Palestine Regeneration Team / PART (Yara Sharif, Nasser Golzari and Murray Fraser). Reflecting on architecture’s role in the geological afterlives of colonialism, the installations put forward different earth-based vernaculars that offer possibilities for planetary repair, restitution and renewal.
The exhibition’s opening coincides with the launch of a publishing collaboration between the British Pavilion curators and e-flux Architecture, comprising conversations on Insurgent Geologies that work with the earth for a different future.
Transforming the 2025 British Pavilion into a site of reinvention, the exhibition invites the visitor to reimagine architecture as an earth practice that rebuilds the connections between people, ecology and land.
The 2025 British Pavilion curators said:
“GBR – Geology of Britannic Repair aims to re-centre architecture’s fundamental relationship to geology, shifting how we see its past and present and re-orienting its future otherwise. With the Great Rift Valley as the exhibition’s geological and conceptual focus, we have brought together a series of installations that propose ‘other architectures’ defined by their relationship to the ground, their resistance to conventional, extractive ways of working, and that are resilient in the face of climate breakdown and social and political upheaval. Turning the British Pavilion inside out, we hope the exhibition will become a vital site for reimagining the relationship between architecture and the earth.”
Sevra Davis, Director of Architecture, Design and Fashion at the British Council and Commissioner of the British Pavilion said:
“The 2025 British Pavilion exhibition will present a compelling and creative vision for the future of architecture that is rooted to the earth and shaped by deep cross-cultural collaboration between the UK and Kenya. Bringing together practitioners from across the UK, Africa and the Rift Valley, the exhibition promotes and protects plurality of cultural expression and dialogue.”
The 2025 British Pavilion exhibition is a key part of the British Council’s UK-Kenya Season 2025: a year of collaboration between the UK and Kenya which celebrates the connections between the two countries. The British Pavilion exhibition is the result of an Open Call, launched in November 2023, for innovative proposals for a UK-Kenya collaborative exhibition.
The British Council has been responsible for the British Pavilion at the International Art and Architecture Exhibitions organised by La Biennale di Venezia since 1937, showcasing the best of the UK's artists, architects, designers and curators. These exhibitions, and the British Council’s Venice Fellowships initiative introduced in 2016, help make the British Pavilion a major platform for discussion about contemporary art and architecture. They also continue the British Council’s work in supporting peace and prosperity by building connections, understanding and trust between people in the UK and countries worldwide.
From the first participation of the British Pavilion at the International Architecture Exhibition in 1991, the British Council has invited high profile names to curate and show. Zaha Hadid, Richard Rogers and Norman Foster have all contributed alongside other emerging and established architects, designers, artists and engineers. The British Pavilion at the Biennale Architettura aims to create debate that both challenges and influences the future of British architecture.
Since 2012 the British Council has commissioned the exhibition through an open call. Curators have been encouraged to use the pavilion as a space for research, alongside showcasing pioneering architecture and challenging ideas.
The British Council is also pleased to share that The Dalmore will join as an official supporting partner of the 2025 British Pavilion, where their aligned values to support and showcase pioneering creative talent naturally complement.
For media enquiries regarding the British Council’s commission for the British Pavilion at the 19th International Art Exhibition - La Biennale di Venezia please contact: Colette Baillie Colette.Baillie@britishcouncil.org
Exhibition details
- Title: GBR – Geology of Britannic Repair
- The commissioner is Sevra Davis, Director of Architecture, Design and Fashion at British Council
- The exhibition will run from Saturday 10 May to Sunday 23 November 2025 (pre-opening 8 May and 9 May)
- The British Pavilion is commissioned and managed by British Council Architecture.
- For latest news on the British Council commission: https://venicebiennale.britishcouncil.org/
- For British Council Venice press office updates: https://venicebiennale.britishcouncil.org/press
Accreditation information
Press accreditation from La Biennale is needed to access the official Pavilions of 18th International Architecture Exhibition – La Biennale di Venezia ahead of the public opening.
For more information on how to apply, please contact: archpress@labiennale.org
About the British Pavilion Selection Committee
A panel of architects, educators and cultural professionals from across the UK and Kenya selected the winning team from a shortlist of four proposals.
The advisory panel of leading architecture professionals changes for every edition of the Architecture Biennale. The selection panel for 2025 consists of:
- Sevra Davis (Chair), Commissioner of the British Pavilion; Director of Architecture, Design and Fashion at the British Council
- Grace Choi, Director, Grace Choi Architecture
- Tom Dyckhoff, Architecture critic, historian, broadcaster and judge on Channel 4’s ‘Handmade: Britain's Best Woodworker’
- Professor Aseem Inam, Professor and Chair in Urban Design, Welsh School of Architecture, Cardiff University
- Joy Mboya, Cultural Activist and Founding Executive Director of the GoDown Arts Centre, Nairobi, Kenya
- Professor Washington Ochieng, Professor at Imperial College and Trustee of the Science Museum
- Muyiwa Oki, President of the Royal Institute of British Architects (RIBA)
- Dr Huda Tayob, Lecturer in Architectural Studies at Manchester School of Architecture
- Tamsie Thomson, CEO, The Royal Incorporation of Architects in Scotland (RIAS)
About the Venice Fellowships
The Venice Fellowships enable students and volunteers to spend a month in Venice during one of the world’s most significant art and architecture biennales: venicebiennale.britishcouncil.org/fellowship/how-apply
Acknowledgements
The British Pavilion is made possible through the generosity of the following organisations whose financial and in-kind contributions support the curators’ vision:
Curator bios
Owen Hopkins is Director of the Farrell Centre at Newcastle University. Previously he was Senior Curator of Exhibitions and Education at Sir John Soane’s Museum and Architecture Programme Curator at the Royal Academy of Arts. Alongside his curatorial practice, he is author or editor of numerous books and journals, including, most recently, Towards Another Architecture: New Visions for the 21st Century.
Kathryn Yusoff is Professor of Inhuman Geography at Queen Mary University of London. Her award winning (Association of American Geographers, 2021) transdisciplinary research addresses the colonial afterlives of geology and race, critical environmental studies and the in/humanities. She is author of Geologic Life and A Billion Black Anthropocenes or None.
Kabage Karanja is an architect, co-founder and director of Cave_bureau, an architectural and research firm based in Nairobi that he started alongside Stella Mutegi in 2014. He leads the research and aesthetic direction of the bureau and is currently a Louis I. Kahn Visiting Professor of Architectural Design at Yale School of Architecture.
Stella Mutegi is an architect, co-founder and director of Cave_bureau, an architectural and research firm based in Nairobi that she started alongside Kabage Karanja in 2014. She heads the technical department at Cave, where she orchestrates the seamless coordination of Cave’s ideas into built form. She is currently a Louis I. Kahn Visiting Professor of Architectural Design at Yale School of Architecture.
The British Council is the UK’s international organisation for cultural relations and educational opportunities. We support peace and prosperity by building connections, understanding and trust between people in the UK and countries worldwide. We do this through our work in arts and culture, education and the English language. We work with people in over 200 countries and territories and are on the ground in more than 100 countries.
About The Dalmore
The Dalmore is a supporting partner of the British Pavilion at the 19th International Architecture Exhibition of La Biennale di Venezia 2025. Founded in 1839 on the shores of the Cromarty Firth in the Scottish Highlands, The Dalmore has been making masterpieces of Single Malt Whisky for over 180 years.
The 12-point silver stag which proudly adorns each bottle was bestowed upon the first chieftain of Clan Mackenzie in 1263 by King Alexander III of Scotland. The stag became the whisky’s emblem when descendants of the clan took over the distillery in 1878. The Dalmore distillery’s collection of idiosyncratic stills creates a New Make spirit of unique character and depth – robust and fruity, particularly well-suited to longer and more complex maturation. This allows The Dalmore’s renowned whisky makers to develop spirit over longer periods, continuing a tradition of visionary whisky-making as they fully express their art using rare casks from some of the world’s finest wineries and bodegas.
The Dalmore is a keen and active supporter of the creative industry, as demonstrated by The Luminary Series and The Portfolio Series, where the worlds of design and whisky making artistry combine, resulting in exceptional collaborations.
