Architecture as an Earth practice

Join us at the Society this June for a free evening lecture with the curators of the British Pavilion for the 2025 Venice Biennale (La Biennale di Venezia).

The evening will draw on the theme of this year's British Pavilion exhibition, Geology of Britannic Repair, which explores architecture’s relation to the Earth. The exhibition’s geographical focus is the Great Rift Valley – a geological formation that runs from southern Turkey through Palestine, the Red Sea to Ethiopia, Kenya and Mozambique.

Through themes of decarbonisation and decolonisation, visitors are invited to reimagine architecture as an earth practice that rebuilds the connections between people, ecology and land.

This is an exciting opportunity to hear from the renowned curatorial team, who include: Kabage Karanja and Stella Mutegi of Nairobi-based architecture studio Cave_bureau, UK-based curator and writer Owen Hopkins and academic Professor Kathryn Yusoff.

During the evening, they will present a compelling lecture-performance. Through a fusion of storytelling, historical inquiry and design, they will expand on the exhibition’s central themes: investigating how architecture has both destructive and reparative potential – complicit in colonial systems of geological extraction but offering potential for repair and resistance against these systems.

What is the Venice Biennale?

The Venice Biennale is an international cultural exhibition hosted annually in Venice, Italy since 1895, one of the longest-running cultural festivals in the world.

Now attracting up to 600,000 international visitors each year, it is renowned for exhibiting groundbreaking artists and presenting pioneering architects through a range of exhibitions.

What is the British Pavilion?

As part of the wider festival, the British Pavilion is a 19th century neo-classical listed building formed of six galleries. The British Council has been responsible for the British Pavilion at the Venice Biennale since 1937, showcasing the best of the UK's artists, architects, designers and curators.

Learn more about the British Pavilion at the Venice Biennale on the British Council website.

Meet our contributors

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.

Explore the exhibition

This year’s British Pavilion explores the relationship between architecture and colonisation as parallel, interconnected practices. Walking through each room of the pavilion will offer new ideas to help visitors reimagine architecture as an earth practice geared towards repair, restitution and renewal.

Find out more on the British Council's website