British Council unveils theme for British Pavilion at 2025 Venice Architecture Biennale

The British Pavilion at the 2025 Architecture Biennale in Venice will explore the role of architecture in addressing the legacy of colonial geological extraction through innovative, earth-based repair practices in a UK-Kenya collaboration.

British Pavilion at the Venice Bienalle  © British Council.

The British Council has announced details of the British Pavilion at the 19th International Architecture Exhibition of La Biennale di Venezia in 2025. Titled GBR – Geology of Britannic Repair, the exhibition will explore how architecture can address the destructive impacts of colonial-era geological extraction through innovative practices of architectural repair. This UK-Kenya collaboration brings together a multidisciplinary team, including Nairobi-based architects Kabage Karanja and Stella Mutegi of Cave_bureau, UK-based curator and writer Owen Hopkins, and academic Professor Kathryn Yusoff. Their focus is the Great Rift Valley, a vast geological formation spanning multiple countries from southern Turkey to Mozambique, serving as both a geographical and conceptual foundation for the exhibition.

The exhibition features installations by Cave_bureau, Mae-ling Lokko and Gustavo Crembil, Thandi Loewenson, and the Palestine Regeneration Team (PART), comprising Yara Sharif, Nasser Golzari, and Murray Fraser. These installations examine the role of architecture in the colonial legacy of geological extraction, presenting earth-based vernaculars that promote environmental and social repair. Coinciding with the exhibition’s opening, a publishing collaboration with e-flux Architecture will launch Insurgent Geologies, a series of conversations that challenge traditional architectural narratives and explore alternative futures rooted in ecological and cultural sustainability. By transforming the British Pavilion into a space of reinvention, the exhibition encourages visitors to rethink architecture as a practice that reconnects people, land, and ecology.

GBR – Geology of Britannic Repair.

Sevra Davis, Director of Architecture, Design and Fashion at the British Council, describes the 2025 British Pavilion as a powerful example of cross-cultural collaboration between the UK and Kenya, shaping a vision for architecture that is deeply connected to the earth. The exhibition is a central feature of UK-Kenya Season 2025, a year-long programme celebrating the ties between the two nations. The British Pavilion, managed by the British Council since 1937, has long been a platform for pioneering discussions on contemporary architecture. Through its open-call process, which has shaped exhibitions since 2012, the British Council continues to challenge and influence the future of British architecture, following in the footsteps of past contributors such as Zaha Hadid, Richard Rogers, and Norman Foster.

Architecture Biennale in Venice runs from 10 May to 23 November 2025. venicebiennale.britishcouncil.org.