Geology of Britannic Repair

The exhibition, GBR – Geology of Britannic Repair, will investigate how architecture can reverse the destructive impacts of colonial systems of geological extraction through emergent practices of architectural repair.

Owen Hopkins is part of the unique UK-Kenya collaboration between a multi-disciplinary team of curators  including Kabage Karanja and Stella Mutegi of Nairobi-based architecture studio Cave_bureau; 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.

A force for repair

Owen Hopkins said:

“Along with my fellow curators, we are very excited to be able to reveal more information about the British Pavilion at this year’s Venice Architecture Biennale. Architecture has long been implicated in the myriad crises that shape the contemporary world, playing a central role in the emergence of the Anthropocene. Our exhibition aims to fundamentally reconstitute architecture as a force for repair, remaking the deep connections between architecture and the earth that colonialism had severed. It has been an amazing privilege working with such distinguished collaborators and, with the biennale opening now only a few weeks away, we can’t wait to welcome visitors to the exhibition.”

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.

Press release adapted with thanks to the British Council