A Month in Venice
Reflections from the British Council Fellowship 2025
By Charlotte Brooks, MArch Student, 2025 Fellow
Last summer I had the opportunity to spend a month in Venice at the 19th International Biennale Architettura 2025 sponsored by the Liverpool School of Architecture in partnership with the British Council. I discovered the opportunity in my first year on the Master of Architecture course at the LSA from previous fellows, Alice and Amber, who took part in the programme in 2024.
My month in Venice as part of the Fellowship Programme has been one of the most formative experiences of my architectural education. Immersed in a city where history, material culture, and environmental fragility coexist, the programme offered an experience that many academic settings cannot replicate. The programme also offered induction meetings with Becky Schutt and Sophie Lucas from the British Council, giving us an opportunity to meet our group for the month.
I arrived for my month-long fellowship in Venice by boat in June 2025. The sun shone brightly over the lagoon’s sparkling blue water, as Venice emerged in the distance through a haze; an image now etched into my mind forever. Over the next month, I invigilated the exhibition, ‘Geology of Britannic Repair’ at the British Pavilion, curated by Kabage Karanja and Stella Mutegi of Nairobi based architecture studio Cave_bureau; UK-based curator and writer Owen Hopkins and academic professor Kathryn Yusoff; a unique collaboration between the UK and Kenya that seeks to unearth ‘other architectures’ that offer possibilities of repair and renewal.
My favourite piece at the British Pavilion was ‘Shimoni Slave Cave’, a 1:1 undulating rattan weave structure of the Shimoni Caves, used as a chamber to store slaves by the British Empire, reimagines a space of trauma as a space for repair and healing. Visitors thought this piece was particularly powerful.
The exhibition can be explored here.
Invigilating at the pavilion offered a rhythm between structured work and unexpected encounters. Mornings were spent greeting visitors from around the world, whereas afternoons were often quieter, dedicated to reading or sketching. Conversations with visitors often led to new perspectives, reminding me that research is also about dialogue; many of the conversations I had were extremely poignant and will stay with me long into my career.
I had the chance to explore the rest of the Giardini and other pavilions and collateral events from around the world. The Spanish pavilion gave me particular inspiration for my final year – lots of models!
Spanish pavilion models, images taken by author
The focus of my research for the month was the Venetian brick. Omnipresent yet overlooked, these bricks carry the city’s stories. Studying them made me notice the subtle ways buildings respond to tides, sun and time. This research evolved into a series of ‘post cards’ combining sketches and writing as well as attempting to calculate the bricks carbon lifecycles. As part of the research, I met with a local architect and ceramist Gaetano Di Gregorio who let me into some secrets about the street signs around Venice and their links to material culture and the city’s history with clay. For example, ‘crea’ meaning ‘make’ or ‘create’; so ‘Ponte De La Crea’ suggests a history of working with clay.
His work on bricks can be found here.
Throughout the month we explored Venice and the surrounding islands as a group and even got to do some scuba diving… albeit there wasn’t much to see in the murky waters off Venice. We also went out for dinner when we could and tried out the local ‘Select spritz’ and cicchetti (venetian tapas).
We also got to experience a special day for the Venetians: Festa del Redentore (Feast of the Redeemer). The weekend commemorates the end of a devastating plague in Venice from 1575-77, creating a bridge that connects to the Redeemer church over St. Mark’s Basin and a fireworks display at night, where we celebrated with the locals on Sant’Elena!
Group 3 Dinner, image taken by author
On our final day at the pavilion, we gave a tour to the next group arriving in Venice. Although a very bittersweet day, I’m incredibly grateful to the University of Liverpool, Sandy Britton, and the British Council for giving me this opportunity. Spending a month at the Biennale was an incredible opportunity to immerse myself in Venice’s architecture and culture, to experience the discipline in a new setting and to explore different ways of thinking about its role in the world today. I would also like to thank Anna and Francesco from M+B Studio for their support at the pavilion and for letting us in on the best secrets of Venice.
