The timely exhibition, commissioned by the British Council, is a collaboration between Kabage Karanja and Stella Mutegi of Nairobi-based studio Cave_bureau; UK-based curator, writer and Farrell Centre director Owen Hopkins; and academic Kathryn Yusoff. The pavilion, which officially opens this Saturday (10 May), focuses on the Rift Valley, a geological formation running from south-eastern Africa through Mozambique, Kenya and Ethiopia, and along the Red Sea through Jordan, Palestine, Israel and Lebanon to southern Turkey. It comprises installations developed by both the core curatorial team as well as those commissioned from practitioners across the world, including Ghanaian Filipino designer Mae-Ling Lokko and Argentinian architect Gustavo Crembil, architectural designer and researcher Thandi Loewenson and design-led research group Palestine Regeneration Team (PART).Advertisement Venice 2025 British Pavilion team: Kabage Karanj and Stella Mutegi of Cave_bureau with Farrell Centre director Owen Hopkins and Kathryn Yusoff, professor of Inhuman Geography at Queen Mary University The pavilion’s façade has been partially obscured by a beaded veil of agricultural waste briquettes, clay and glass beads, produced in Kenya and India, to echo both Maasai practices and those historically made on Murano, Venice, as currency for the exchange of metals, minerals and enslaved people. The veil, titled Double Vision, aims to reference ‘other earths’ that have been displaced by systems of empire. Inside the six gallery spaces are multisensory installations including The Earth Compass, a series of celestial maps connecting London and Nairobi; the Rift Room tracing one of humans’ earliest migration routes; and a large-scale bronze cast of a valley cave. In addition, Kenyan and British bricks have been inserted into the pavilion’s structure as a way of exploring material reclamation and colonial resistance. The third room houses Objects of Repair, a project by PART, which was founded by Yara Sharif, Nasser Golzari and Murray Fraser to search for creative spatial possibilities in Palestine to heal fractures caused by Israel's military assault on the Gaza strip.Advertisement The project explores the use of salvaged materials and innovative techniques for the reconstruction and regeneration of Gaza while addressing scarcity and climate justice. Cave_bureau and Danish academic Phil Ayres have created a rattan weave structure for the fourth room, following a trip taken to Kenya’s limestone Shimoni Slave Caves, which once served as holding cells for enslaved Africans. The installation is a 1:1 reproduction of one cave’s interior and reimagines the former space of trauma as one for repair and healing. Architectural designer Loewenson’s Lumumba’s Grave explores ‘technofossils’, remnants of man-made objects sent to space. Here, graphite drawings line the walls and ceiling. For the final gallery space, Lokko and Crembil present Vena Cava, a piece seeking to reclaim Kew Garden’s Palm House, the world’s first large-scale greenhouse and a symbol of colonialism, as a site for generative justice. The palm house structure is empty, but its timber structure inverts the greenhouse’s pioneering iron and glass construction. The commission is a ‘flagship initiative’ of the British Council’s UK-Kenya Season 2025. British Pavilion commissioner Sevra Davis said it aimed to celebrate the creative, cultural and educational links between the UK and Kenya, by ‘showcasing new thinking about how architecture as we know it can be better connected to the earth and contribute to a future based on repair and renewal’. The curatorial team said of the UK-Kenyan collaboration that they are ‘two countries that have had a difficult, unequal and often brutalised history’. They added: ‘As curators, we see this collaboration as an intervention in building reparative relations, one that acknowledges the rifted histories of colonial afterlives, and the role of architecture in constructing new imaginaries. ‘We hope visitors to the exhibition will question who gets to represent and imagine the world in a time of planetary fire.’ The winning team was selected over a year ago from a shortlist of four proposals by a panel of architects, educators and cultural professionals from both the UK and Kenya. It was selected ahead of: London and Nairobi-based architecture practice MSOMA Architects led by Bushra Mohamed with Nele Bergmans; George Massoud of Material Cultures with Nana Biamah-Ofosu of YAA Projects and Sandra Githinji; and Helena Rivera, director of A Small Studio with Constance Smith, James Muriuki and Wajukuu Collective. The 2025 judging panel included pavilion commissioner Davis, architect Grace Choi, architecture critic and historian Tom Dyckhoff, professor Aseem Inam, cultural activist Joy Mboya, professor Washington Ochieng, RIBA president Muyiwa Oki, academic Huda Tayob and RIAS chief executive Tamsie Thomson. The 2023 Venice Architecture Biennale was curated by Ghanaian-Scottish architect Lesley Lokko. The main exhibitions included 89 participants, of which more than half were from Africa or the African diaspora. The British Pavilion installation that year, Dancing Before the Moon, focused on how customs and traditions shape public space and was curated by JA Projects founding director Jayden Ali; Joseph Zeal-Henry, director of cultural planning for the City of Boston; Meneesha Kellay, contemporary curator at the V&A and Clore Fellow; and Sumitra Upham, associate director of curatorial and public practice at the Wellcome Collection. This year’s exhibition will run from Saturday 10 May to Sunday 23 November 2025. The pre-opening is on Thursday 8 and Friday 9 May. This edition of the Venice Biennale includes 65 national pavilions, 11 collateral events, and over 750 participants in the international exhibition curated by Italian architect and engineer Carlo Ratti.