Assembly explores how architecture can bring people together.
Inspired by Ireland’s Citizens’ Assembly, this multi-sensory pavilion invites visitors to step inside a space shaped by collective voices.
Handcrafted from Irish beech and woven textiles, the installation combines traditional skills with contemporary design. Within, a chorus of soundboxes creates an immersive soundscape of music, poetry, and voices from participants and makers, reflecting on how we listen, speak, and decide together. Both instrument and gathering place, Assembly considers how architecture might support open dialogue and collective action-offering a space to hear and be heard.
The Ireland at Venice 2025 team included Louise Cotter, David Naessens, Michelle Delea, Alan Meredith, Luke Naessens and David Stalling.
Ireland at Venice is an initiative of Culture Ireland in partnership with the Arts Council Culture Ireland. The national tour of Ireland at Venice is supported by the Arts Council to promote architecture to audiences in Ireland.
Assembly Conversations | 14 July, 12:30pm
At a moment when civic discourse is increasingly fragmented and mediated through digital space, Assembly proposes the act of coming together, physically and collectively, as both a political and poetic gesture. The national tour brings the pavilion into dialogue with audiences across Ireland and inviting new communities to inhabit, activate, and contribute to the work.
Assembly Conversations, chaired by award-winning Irish architect and academic Dr John McLaughlin, will take place on July 14 at 12.30 , inviting audiences into a wider reflection on the architectures of dialogue and assembly.
Venue: O’Donoghue Theatre, University of Galway
General Info