Dear Member,

You are warmly invited to join us for a special event marking the closing weekend of Ireland’s participation at the 19th International Architecture Exhibition – La Biennale di Venezia.

WHEN

Saturday, 22nd November 2025 at 2pm (group meeting point at Arsenale entrance: 1.15pm) 

WHERE

Ireland Pavilion
La Biennale di Venezia – 19th International Architecture Exhibition
L’Arsenale, 30122 Venice, Italy

WHAT

A presentation at the Ireland Pavilion followed by tour and refreshments:

Welcome remarks from the Ambassador Designate of Ireland to Italy, Elizabeth McCullough
Keynote by Conor Sreenan, State Architect and Principal Architect, Office of Public Works, Ireland
Presentation of ASSEMBLY, the Irish Pavilion, by Curators Cotter & Naessens Architects
Tour followed by networking and refreshments

Ireland at Venice is an initiative of Culture Ireland in partnership with the Arts Council of Ireland.

This event is hosted by the Irish Business Network Italy with the support of the Embassy of Ireland. To register, please click here. 

Thank you to those who have already registered! Further to registration, your ticket to access the Biennale will be sent to you by email the week before the event. Members are welcome to bring a guest, tickets for your guest can be purchased at the following link: https://www.labiennale.org/en/architecture/2025/information#tickets.  

-Speaker: Conor Sreenan, State Architect and Principal Architect, Office of Public Works, Ireland

In March 2025 Conor Sreenan was appointed as the State Architect and Principal Architect at the Office of Public Works, Ireland. He follows many distinguished predecessors over very many years. Ireland is unique in combining these roles. While many other States have either a State Architect, or a Principal Architect, others have neither. Conor will introduce himself, discuss his role and share his thoughts in conversation with the audience. 

Conor is joined by two architects from the OPW, selected through a Continuing Professional Development initiative within the OPW.  Both architects arrive to Venice having held workshops with counterparts in Italy where they have shared experiences and exchanged expertise. The outcomes of these workshops will benefit the delivery of specific building projects and infrastructure underway in Ireland, in service of Government priorities. In conversation with Conor, topics relating to the true nature of collaboration, the role of design in achieving value-for-many and the importance of enduring outcomes are explored with competent curiosity.

-Presentation of the Irish Pavilion: ASSEMBLY by Cotter & Naessens Architects

Cotter & Naessens Architects are an architecture and design studio based in Cork City since 2001 and founded by Louise Cotter and David Naessens. 

To assemble is to gather together as a group of people with a common interest. To assemble is to construct a whole from constituent parts. As both congregation and construction, assembly is at the heart of the architectural process.

In 2016 Ireland established the Citizens’ Assembly, which brings together 100 residents to deliberate issues ranging from marriage equality to biodiversity loss. This political experiment has been promoted as a form of participatory democracy, meant to bring the ordinary “citizen” closer to the processes of governance. Could Citizens’ Assemblies be realized at different scales, their principles expanding into the spaces of everyday life? The product of an interdisciplinary collaboration between architects, a composer, a poet, and a woodworker, Assembly is a prototype for a structure that facilitates non-hierarchical communication between strangers. Circular, modular, and small in scale, it can be inserted into public spaces from the school to the shopping centre, transforming them into sites of civic participation. Its resonant voids house a chorus of soundboxes, each delivering a partial fragment of a polyphonic soundscape incorporating music, poetry, interviews with the Citizens’ Assembly’s designers and participants, and recordings that reflexively document the structure’s own fabrication. An instrument designed to harmonise a multitude of dissonant voices, the pavilion reflects on assembly as a product and process of making. 

We look forward to seeing many of you in Venice!

IBNI Committee