British Council – British Pavilion in Venice

The British Council appointed the award-winning architecture critic Ellis Woodman to curate the British Pavilion for the 11th Venice Architecture Biennale. This year’s Advisory Panel for the British Pavilion were architects David Chipperfield and Farshid Moussavi; Financial Times Architecture Correspondent, Edwin Heathcote; curator Francesca Ferguson, Director of SAM Basel; and Deyan Sudjic, Director of the Design Museum. It was commissioned by Emily Campbell and Catherine Ince from the Design and Architecture team at the British Council.

Woodman’s exhibition examined how five contemporary architects, all inheritors of the generation gap that ensued when Britain’s programme of post-war reconstruction drew to a close in the 1970s, are beginning to address the question of housing again. The exhibition considered the scale of Britain’s housing challenge and its potential to contribute to progressive architectural, social, commercial and legislative thinking.

The exhibition not only explored the roots of the British obsession with home ownership but the effect of the long-term domination of housing by private-sector developers in the UK.

It was an exploration of the work of five British architects who are building housing both in the UK and abroad. They were: de Rijke Marsh Morgan, Maccreanor Lavington, Sergison Bates, Tony Fretton and Witherford Watson Mann.

This year’s Biennale was under the directorship of Aaron Betsky, former of the Netherlands Architecture Institute (NAI) of Rotterdam, and now Director of the Cincinnati Art Museum.

Commissioners: Emily Campbell (British Council) and Catherine Ince (British Council).
Curator: Ellis Woodman.
Commissioned photography: John Davies.
Exhibition and catalogue design: Laurent Benner & John Hares & Michael Marriott.
Project manager: Will Sorrell (British Council).