From Department of Tourism, Culture, Arts, Gaeltacht, Sport and Media
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The Minister for Tourism, Culture, Arts, Gaeltacht, Sports and Media, Catherine Martin T.D., has announced the selection of Cotter & Naessens Architects as the curators to represent Ireland at the 19th Venice Architecture Biennale in 2025. Their project was selected following an open call by Culture Ireland, in partnership with the Arts Council.
Minister Martin said:
“I would like to congratulate Cotter & Naessens Architects on being selected to represent Ireland at the 2025 Venice Architecture Biennale. Participation at the Venice Biennale is an important way to increase awareness of Ireland’s vibrant architecture sector. Ireland’s participation in the Biennale offers an incredible opportunity to connect the ideas and practices of contemporary architecture in Ireland to those of thinkers and publics internationally. My Department through Culture Ireland commissions Ireland at Venice in partnership with the Arts Council.”
Assembly will present the results of an interdisciplinary collaborative process between Cotter & Naessens Architects, sound artist David Stalling, poet Michelle Delea, and curator Luke Naessens. The design will be a multisensory installation exploring the critical concept of assembly, a potent word that signifies both congregation and construction, inspired by the innovative political model of the Citizens’ Assembly, introduced by the Irish government in 2016.
The curators, Cotter & Naessens Architects, said:
“We are honoured to represent Ireland in Venice at the Biennale di Architettura 2025 and hope to continue the tradition of beautifully made and thoughtful projects presented over the years by our peers and colleagues in the profession. As both congregation and construction, assembly is at the heart of the architectural process and we are excited to work collaboratively with David Stalling and Michelle Delea to offer a soundscape to be inhabited and a space to be heard.”
The Venice Architecture Biennale, which will run from May to November 2025, remains the most important global platform for the exhibition of architecture. It offers a unique opportunity for Irish architects to engage with international audiences. Ireland at Venice 2025 will build on Ireland’s strong presence at the Venice Architecture Biennale in recent years. The 16th Venice Architecture Biennale in 2018 was curated by Shelley McNamara and Yvonne Farrell of Grafton Architects.
Ireland at Venice is an initiative of Culture Ireland in partnership with the Arts Council. The selection of the team to represent Ireland was made following an open, competitive process, with international jury members.
Notes to editors:
Assembly
Assembly, the Irish pavilion at the Biennale di Architettura 2025, will be a multisensory installation exploring the critical concept of assembly, a potent word that signifies both congregation and construction. It will present the results of an interdisciplinary collaborative process between Cotter & Naessens Architects, sound artist David Stalling, poet Michelle Delea, and curator Luke Naessens.
Cotter & Naessens’ design will be inspired by the innovative political model of the Citizens’ Assembly, introduced by the Irish government in 2016 to allow regular citizens to consider the most critical constitutional and social issues of our time. Imagining the expansion of this inclusive political experiment out of the committee room and into the spaces of everyday life, Assembly will be a conceptual architectural prototype for non-hierarchical gathering, communication, and debate in a public setting.
The pavilion will house a new commission by sound artist David Stalling and poet Michelle Delea that examines the theme of assembly through the lenses of music and language. Informed by musical traditions such as call and response or the Venetian cori spezzati (split choir), it will feature a polyphonic chorus of diverse sounds and human voices: a musical assembly attuned to the pavilion’s physical architecture.
Cotter & Naessens Bio
Cotter & Naessens Architects are an architecture and design studio based in Cork City since 2001 and founded by Louise Cotter and David Naessens. Their work is focused on public projects and is informed by design research, through teaching and design competitions, notably dlrLexicon in Dun Laoghaire and most recently the FOCAS Research Institute, Technical University Dublin.
Cotter & Naessens were one of 16 practices invited to participate in Close Encounters, which was a commission for Freespace, the 2018 Venice Biennale exhibition curated by Yvonne Farrell and Shelley McNamara. Louise Cotter and David Naessens participated in one of the first Biennale di Architettura curated by Aldo Rossi in 1985.
David Stalling Bio
David Stalling is a composer, sound artist, improviser and audio producer whose practice transcends the traditional definition of composing. He works with various media: acoustic and electronic sound; field recordings, moving image, lighting, and scientific data.
Current and recent projects include Earth Traces (2023–24), at the Sedgwick Museum of Earth Sciences, Cambridge; all these worlds (2022–23), at the Museum of Literature Ireland, Dublin; and Under the Feet of Shadows (2024), a multimedia installation by EL Putnam and Mike McCormack.
Stalling is represented by the Contemporary Music Centre Ireland and his work is published with Farpoint Recordings.
Michelle Delea Bio
Michelle Delea is a multidisciplinary artist engaged in architecture, poetry, filmmaking and event promotion. She holds an MA in Architecture from CCAE and currently works between practice and education. Her writing has appeared in The Stinging Fly, Type.ie and Architecture Ireland. In 2022, she produced the documentary film The Sprawling Octopus of an Elevated Highway, regarding architectural activism in 1960’s Cork.
Luke Naessens Bio
Luke Naessens is a curator and art historian. He received a PhD in art history from Princeton University in 2024 and is the 2024–25 Terra Foundation Postdoctoral Fellow in the Centre for American Art at the Courtauld Institute. He previously worked as a member of the curatorial team at the Barbican Centre in London.