Farrell Centre Director to represent UK at La Biennale di Venezia
16 April 2024
Owen Hopkins, Director of the Farrell Centre at Newcastle University, is to represent the UK at the 19th International Architecture Exhibition at La Biennale di Venezia 2025.
Owen will be part of a collaborative UK-Kenya curatorial team of architectural practitioners, and will be joined by:
- Dr Kathryn Yusoff, Professor of Inhuman Geography at Queen Mary University
- Kabage Karanja, Co-founder & Director of Cave_bureau based in Nairobi, Kenya
- Stella Mutegi, Co-founder & Director of Cave_bureau based in Nairobi, Kenya
The 19th International Architecture Exhibition will be held from Saturday 24 May to Sunday 23 November 2025 (pre-opening May 22 and 23).
The British Council, the UK’s international organisation for cultural relations and educational opportunities, has been commissioning the British Pavilion in Venice since 1937, showcasing the best of the UK's artists, architects, designers and curators. These exhibitions, and the Venice Fellowships initiative introduced in 2016, help make the British Pavilion a platform for discussion about contemporary art and architecture.
A panel of architects, educators and cultural professionals from across the UK and Kenya, chaired by the British Council’s Sevra Davis, selected the winning team from a shortlist of four proposals. The exhibition will explore architectures of repair, restitution, and renewal. Conceiving architecture as an earth practice that is implicated in empires of extractive geology, it looks to vernaculars as sites where the parallel and interconnected tasks of decarbonising and decolonising can be further explored and expressed.
The exhibition will include a range of sensory-based physical and digital installations, transforming the 2025 British Pavilion into a site of reinvention and reimagining for architecture and for the earth.
A curator, writer and architectural historian, Owen has been Director of the Farrell Centre - a public centre for architecture and cities - since 2019 and is responsible for all aspects of centre’s programme, management and operations.
"I am really excited to be part of such a fantastic UK-Kenya team which has been entrusted by the British Council to curate the British Pavilion for the 2025 Venice Architecture Biennale,” Owen said. “As we recognise and take action to decarbonise and decolonise global systems, our exhibition will bring together architectures of repair, restitution and renewal, transforming the pavilion into a site of reinvention and reimagining for architecture and for the earth.”
Sevra Davis, Director of Architecture Design Fashion at the British Council said: “The British Council is delighted to announce the appointed UK-Kenya team of Owen Hopkins, Kabage Karanja, Stella Mutegi and Kathryn Yusoff to develop and deliver the British Pavilion at the 19th International Architecture Exhibition at the Venice Biennale in 2025. As part of the upcoming 2025 UK-Kenya Season of Culture, this appointment marks the first time that the British Council uses our platform as a cultural relations organisation to celebrate international connection and collaboration through the British Pavilion in Venice. I look forward to working with the appointed team to develop and deliver an exhibition that speaks not only of an ‘architecture of repair’ but also celebrates cross-cultural knowledge creation. The exhibition will acknowledge the past while presenting an exciting vision for a more equitable future. I would like to thank all the teams that submitted proposals for the 2025 exhibition for the time and energy that went into the applications.”
Professor Aseem Inam of the Selection Committee said: “The selected proposal is remarkably provocative, creative, and thoughtful. The proposal recognizes that architecture has been complicit in inequality and environmental degradation, but that it also offers opportunities for repair, restitution, and renewal. Through a collaboration between a Nairobi-based curatorial and architectural practice, a Newcastle-based curator and writer, and a London-based professor of inhuman geography, the team will curate and present restorative and ameliorative projects in the UK, Kenya, and elsewhere. We look forward to the realisation of this remarkable exhibit!”
The appointed curatorial team said:“We are honoured to have been selected to curate the British Pavilion at La Biennale di Venezia 2025” . Our UK and Kenya combined team intersects multiple disciplines and geographies, with a critical perspective on how to use this unique platform. 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."
Tom Porter, Country Director Kenya, at the British Council said: “This landmark collaboration at the Venice Architecture Biennale presents a timely opportunity to celebrate creative collaboration between the UK and Kenya on a global stage. The programme will be a highlight of our UK Kenya Season 2025. The team’s ambition to explore repair, restitution, and renewal will inspire important conversations and bring nuanced perspectives to architecture's impact on people and our planet.”
Press release adapted with thanks to the British Council