Australia’s Venice Biennale team on the politics of words, space and place
The First Nations-led design team discuss how, when words fail us, architecture can empower us with an empathetic sense of being.
Jack Gillmer-Lilley, Emily McDaniel and Michael Mossman are the creative directors of the Australia Pavilion at the 2025 Venice Architecture Biennale.
Their installation, titled “Home,” is a multi-sensory design that incorporates physical, interactive and virtual media, and participatory opportunities for visitors to storytell their understandings of home through the lens of Country.
ArchitectureAu associate editor Lucia Amies spoke to the creative team about Indigenising practice at home and abroad, and the unspoken power of space to create shared experience.
Lucia Amies: The selection of an all-First Nations team for the 2025 Australia Pavilion marks a significant moment in the history of the Venice Architecture Biennale, and is particularly timely given Archie Moore and Ellie Buttrose’s Golden Lion win for their installation in the Australia Pavilion at the 2024 Venice Art Biennale. How do you believe this platform will shape the future of architecture in Australia (and that of other colonial societies worldwide), and what do you imagine this decolonised future to look like?
Jack Gillmer-Lilley: Colonisation was an aggressive assertion, and is a major part of our dark history that will forever affect us as people and as a society.
I’ve been thinking about the terminology of “Indigenise” over “decolonise,” and what an Indigenised future might look like. How do we actually seek to Indigenise practice rather than decolonise practice? Because I don’t think we can decolonise something that continues to impact us.
Emily McDaniel: Words are incredibly important to what we do. In the notion of Indigenising there is something extraordinarily energising – that it is no longer our work to undo the legacy of the colonial regime, but to find the ways that we can redefine industry by meeting it with our cultural identities and knowledge.
There are many ways of understanding notions of Indigenising. The way I think about it is: we take the tools and techniques that have been used by Western societies and we use them to better our futures, and that’s what we want to do at the Venice Biennale. We’re extraordinarily excited to be doing that, and we want to spend our time rebuilding, rather than unbuilding.
LA: You’re taking the tools of Western societies and then you’re giving back a whole new set of tools for Western society to understand and use. It’s this dialogue, back and forth.
Michael Mossman: Yes, dialogue’s important and that’s what we’re setting out to achieve with Home – to start a conversation with a question that everyone can relate to. We do that through talking, yarning and making – practices connected both to ancient ways and the present. It’s easy to lose sight of that. We want to bring that to the forefront with what we want to place into Home, so that we can achieve something that reactivates ways that communities from all across the world engage in dialogical practices.
LA: Within the context of Venice – one of the most touristed cities in the world – how did the creative team grapple with authentically “representing” Country to an audience of foreigners?
EM: One of the things that we discussed very early in our relationship to Venice was that we’re not seeking to create a false sense of Australiana, where you walk through the doors of the Australia pavilion and you’re transported back to Australia.
We very much recognise Country. We recognise Venice. We recognise the canal location. We recognise the extraordinary lagoon borders that rise and fall and merge throughout Venice. We’re not fighting against the context that we’re in, and that is, for us, Country-centred design.
Everywhere we go, we’re trying to find ways to not only take our home with us, but to make ourselves at home. For this exhibit, part of that is inviting the sightline of the canal in, part of that is working with Venetian materials.
Home proposal by the Creative Sphere.
Image: Visualisation prepared by SJB
LA: The architecture of the installation is comprised of a rammed earth wall and several movable rammed earth vessels. How did you land upon this materiality to embody Country, in all its diversity?
JG: Like Emily said, we’re not trying to present a false sense of Australiana in the pavilion, but a sense of Country wherever this pavilion might be situated. So, wherever it travels – if it happens to be in Venice or Switzerland or Sweden or Antarctica – you’re using the materials of that country, and celebrating the people and skills of that point in time.
We’ve been having great discourse with Italian brick manufacturer S.Anselmo. Together, we’re looking at using what is often perceived as a waste resource from the excavation and demolition of construction sites. S.Anselmo has partnerships with contractors enabling them to acquire the clays that are stripped out of Country – Venice Country in this instance. From the amount of clay they’ve acquired from excavation sites, they can create 120,000 bricks a day for 13 years.
That’s a lot of tangible Country. So, we’re looking at using “waste” material in an unstabilised way – which would otherwise go on to contaminate other soils – as a valuable resource in our proposal, and also aiming to share innovative ideas like these.
A maquette of the pavilion.
Image & Model: Jack Gillmer-Lilley
LA: The monumental nature of rammed earth means that it is relatively resource-intensive. How are the logistics and ethics (e.g. material displacement, reuse following conclusion of the exhibition) of building from earth considered in the design?
JG: The bench seat and wall that creates the ceremonial space will be in-situ rammed earth. We are currently prototyping and understanding the structural opportunities and constraints that will determine the final resolution. Ideally, the elements will be local, sustainable and ultimately returned to Earth.
LA: How do you see the rammed earth wall deconstructing post-pavilion?
JG: The earth can effectively be returned or reused. Gypsum, which comprises the perimeter plaster panelled wall, is also a super abundant resource. Clarence [Slockee] – one of the Creative Sphere members – shared that landscapers use gypsum within their soil mixtures to assist in the recovery and healing of soil conditions, given agriculture and other destructive mechanisms on our soils. Everything in the exhibition can effectively be returned to Earth or reconstructed in other locations.
LA: Carlo Ratti’s agenda for the 2025 International Architecture Exhibition at the Venice Biennale tasks designers with gathering broad intelligence in the design of our collective built environment under the themes of intelligens, natural, artificial and collective. In response, Home presents an “experience grounded in Indigenous knowledge systems and architectural innovation.” How do these two ideas – of ancient knowledge and innovation – come together in the proposal?
MM: Where we’ve been coming from in recent years relates to process being such an important part of architectural design. Prior to the last few years, the voices of Indigenous Australians have not been part of these conversations, or these processes. We’re really starting to see an evolution of architecture and that, to me, is the significant innovation.
The inclusion of First Nations voices as part of this process enacts a very enriching contribution to the architectural process with knowledge systems that are part of a place for millennia and are still continuous. What we’ve produced for the concept for Home really extends that and provides another activation of those processes in its own formality.
I think it’s about how then the audience engages with the content that is produced, and a big part of it is about engaging with students of architecture as part of the exhibition. As an academic, the broad remit for what I do is about opening up mindsets of how architectural design is inclusive and celebrates First Nations cultures, but also acknowledges the violent histories and the states of terror that First Nations peoples have existed within and still do.
By asking the question, “what does home mean?” to each of those participants, they might find that there are connections with people’s histories and ancestry that have been through similar types of history, stories and narratives that are celebratory and traumatic at the same time. With Home, we’re creating a space for dialogue and acknowledging the recent referendum. Events like those are setbacks, but at the same time, we look for the opportunities, and we keep enacting our practices to really focus on what we can continue to do in our ways.
LA: Ceremony is a vital part of the proposal’s design, being embedded in both the physical architecture and temporal gathering of people within the space. How is the concept of ceremony made legible to an international audience, who are perhaps unfamiliar with the significance of the Welcome to Country ceremony and the informal mechanisms of yarning?
EM: I don’t think international audiences aren’t familiar with the notion of ceremony. I think it is something that we all collectively – as humanity – understand. The Venice Biennale of Architecture is a ceremony. It happens biannually. It brings people together at a certain point in time.
Ceremony is a consciousness of coming together and a shared experience to mark a moment that imparts a memory – a bodily memory, a psychological memory, a collective memory. You might walk into the Australia pavilion as an individual, but you’ll emerge as part of a collective. You might not know the names and faces, or the number of people that you’re connected to, but you will know that thousands of people have walked through that pavilion and have shared that exact experience. Their hands have felt the same textures and tactility that yours have. They’ve heard the same sounds. They’ve been immersed in the same sense. There’s a shared experience there, and that is ceremony.
Left to right: Creative Sphere member Bradley Kerr, creative director Michael Mossman and creative director Jack Gillmer-Lilley presenting Blakitecture: Home at MPavilion.
Image: Kayla May Petty-Kook
We said earlier that words are important, but I think sometimes they fail us […] like a simple yes/no vote. And what do we do when words fail us? I think we turn to ceremony – to a shared moment of acknowledging the setback and moving forward together.
This exhibition has been designed not only as a provocation but as an invitation. We want people to physically experience this project. We’re inviting you to take your shoes off, make yourself comfortable and allow your hands to experience it as much as your eyes. That’s very conscious. We want people to not only recall this project in their mind, but through their body, to remember what it felt like, what it smelled like. I think that will do justice to how we collectively reimagine the notion of ceremony on an international scale.
LA: How is the concept of “home” or “ceremony” understood in instances when the space is occupied by one person?
MM: I think what we’re wanting is that visitors can arrive to the space and recognise that there’s a process of leaving behind a mark of their presence. As they arrive to the space, they can see they’re not alone. They’re in the presence of many others who have been there and are still there.
As visitors move through the pavilion, there’s physical elements in the space and living belongings that are showcased. There’s this notion of sharing stories of what home means behind each of those living belongings. No matter what time it is and how many people are in the space you’re always part of a broader collective presence of those who’ve been before you.
“Home” will debut to the public at the Venice Architecture Biennale in May 2025.
Written by Lucia Amies for Architecture AU
Source: https://architectureau.com/articles/australias-venice-biennale-team-on-the-politics-of-words-space-and-place/