The British Council has just announced the team set to represent the United Kingdom at the 19th International Architecture Exhibition – La Biennale di Venezia 2025. The selected team comprises experts from the UK and Kenya, including Nairobi-based Cave_bureau. Scheduled to run from May 24 to November 23, 2025, the UK Pavilion hopes to ignite meaningful conversations about architecture’s impact on communities and the planet.
The upcoming exhibition will delve into themes of repair, restitution, and renewal within the realm of architecture. Viewing architecture as a practice intertwined with geological processes, the exhibition aims to explore vernacular languages as avenues for addressing decarbonization and decolonization. Featuring a diverse ratio of physical and digital installations, the exhibition seeks to transform the British Pavilion into a space for innovation and environmental contemplation.
The selected team consists of curators and architects from the UK and Kenya. From Kenya, co-founders and directors of Cave_bureau, Kabage Karanja, and Stella Mutegi, have been selected. In fact, Cave_bureau participated as part of the 18th International Architecture Exhibition, curated by Lesley Lokko. Located in the central pavilion, the practice celebrates cultural custodians and generational histories through an “Oral Archive” by presenting conversations with members of African cave-dwelling communities. The experimental studio also recently participated in the Sharjah Architecture Triennial, exploring the volcanic caves of Kenya and using their intelligence to develop sustainable solutions for the future.
The exhibition will map architectures from across the world defined by an embedded relationship to the ground, which are resilient in the face of climate breakdown, social, economic and political upheaval; and that offer refuge and empowerment for the most climate exposed communities. To frame this, we intend to conceptually reinscribe the British Pavilion by turning it inside out and unearth what these acts of repair might look like when framing a planetary vernacular. – The appointed curatorial team.
Alongside Cave_bureau, the exhibition will be curated by Owen Hopkins, the Director of the Farrell Center at Newcastle University, and Dr. Kathryn Yusoff, Professor of Inhuman Geography at Queen Mary University. As director, Hopkin’s Farrel Center is a new public center for architecture and cities which he has led since 2019. Previously, he was Senior Curator of Exhibitions and Education at Sir John Soane’s Museum. Dr. Yussoff’s practice experiments with trans-disciplinary research addressing the colonial afterlives of geology and race as a site of social change.
The 19th Annual Architecture Biennale will be curated by Carlo Ratti, who claims “real intelligence is everywhere. The disembodied ingenuity of evolution, the growing power of computers, and the collective wisdom of the crowd. To face a burning world, architecture must harness all the intelligence around us.” Last year, the UK Pavilion “Dancing Before the Moon” displayed several installations, exploring architectural phenomena that are intangible.
