We're delighted to announce the team of architectural practitioners selected to represent the UK at the 19th International Architecture Exhibition at La Biennale di Venezia 2025.
The exhibition will run from Saturday 10 May to Sunday 23 November 2025 (pre-opening 8 May and 9 May).
The collaborative UK-Kenya curatorial team selected is:
- Owen Hopkins: Director of the Farrell Centre at Newcastle University
- 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
Owen Hopkins is Director of the Farrell Centre at Newcastle University – a new public centre for architecture and cities – and is responsible for all aspects of centre’s programme, management and operations. Previous roles include Senior Curator of Exhibitions and Education at Sir John Soane’s Museum and Architecture Programme Curator at the Royal Academy of Arts.
Kathryn Yusoff is Professor of Inhuman Geography at Queen Mary University of London. Her transdisciplinary research addresses the colonial afterlives of geology and race as a site of planetary transformation and social change.
Kabage Karanjais 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 an Adjunct Assistant Professor at Columbia University’s Graduate School of Architecture Planning & Preservation.
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.
'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.'
Appointed curatorial team
Selection Committee
A panel of architects, educators and cultural professionals from across the UK and Kenya selected the winning team from a shortlist of four proposals. The exhibition will explore architectures of repair, restitution, and renewal, and 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.
The advisory panel of leading architecture professionals changes for every edition of the Architecture Biennale. The panel selecting for 2025 consists of:
- Sevra Davis (Chair), Commissioner of the British Pavilion; Director of Architecture Design and Fashion at the British Council
- Grace Choi, Director, Grace Choi Architecture
- Tom Dyckhoff, Architecture critic, historian, broadcaster and judge on Channel 4’s ‘Handmade: Britain's Best Woodworker’
- Professor Aseem Inam, Professor and Chair in Urban Design, Welsh School of Architecture, Cardiff University
- Joy Mboya, Cultural Activist and Founding Executive Director of the GoDown Arts Centre, Nairobi, Kenya
- Professor Washington Ochieng, Professor at Imperial College and Trustee of the Science Museum
- Muyiwa Oki, President of the Royal Institute of British Architects (RIBA)
- Dr Huda Tayob, Lecturer in Architectural Studies at Manchester School of Architecture
- Tamsie Thomson, CEO, The Royal Incorporation of Architects in Scotland (RIAS)
'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 celebrates cross-cultural knowledge creation and acknowledges the past while presenting an exciting vision for a more equitable future.'
Sevra Davis, British Council Director of Architecture Design Fashion'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.'
Professor Aseem Inam, Selection Committee