The Australian Institute of Architects present HOME at the 19th International Architecture Exhibition, La Biennale di Venezia, which will run from 8 May – 20 November in 2025.
HOME presents an immersive, culturally rich experience grounded in Indigenous knowledge systems and architectural innovation. Led by Dr Michael Mossman, Emily McDaniel, and Jack Gillmer (Lilley), as part of a Creative Sphere of First Nations architects and practitioners, the project conceptualises “home” as a convergence of memory, sensation, relationships, and future. The pavilion design integrates natural and artificial elements, focusing on sustainability, community engagement, and deep connections with Country.
The proposal offers visitors an interactive space — the Country Sphere — designed for sensory engagement with earth, sound, and tactile elements. Participants are invited to leave their mark on the Living Canvas, sharing stories of home through a fusion of ancient traditions and contemporary technologies. The pavilion fosters deep connections with the environment, utilising both physical experiences and digital extensions through augmented reality.
The Creative Sphere of Indigenous leadership of Mossman, McDaniel and Gillmer, and Clarence Slockee, Kaylie Salvatori, Elle Davidson, and Bradley Kerr, alongside global ambassadors, will bring rich cultural programming to the pavilion. This will feature storytelling, performance, future generational contributions and hands-on cultural exchanges, encouraging visitors to engage deeply with the theme of Home.
HOME highlights the ethical significance of culture and sustainability, proposing that materials can be returned to Country, ensuring a minimal environmental impact and challenging the status quo of exhibition practices. This approach reinforces Country as foundational to the Biennale themes of Intelligens. Natural. Artificial. Collective and a core driver of architectural innovation. Positioned to challenge conventional architectural paradigms, the exhibition aims to leave a lasting legacy that integrates Indigenous knowledge and practices, inspiring future generations of architects to embrace a culturally and environmentally sustainable approach to the built environment.
Dr Michael Mossman is a Kuku Yalanji man who lectures and researches at the University of Sydney School of Architecture Design and Planning. He is a registered architect who champions Country and First Nations cultures as agents for structural change in the broader architectural profession at educational, practice and policy levels. As co-lead creative director, Michael will lead logistics + dialogue around public engagement + culture + architecture
Jack Gillmer-Lilley (Worimi & Biripi Guri) is an associate and First Nations lead at SJB. Interested in the intersection of cultural knowledge systems and the built environment, he seeks to enable Country as co- designer and collaborator of narrative and architectural approach to place. As co-lead creative director, Jack will lead logistics + dialogue around public engagement + culture +architecture.
Emily McDaniel is a Sydney-based independent curator, writer and educator from the Kalari Clan of the Wiradjuri Nation in central New South Wales. She consults on curatorship, engagement and interpretation in the public domain, the museums and galleries sector and media. As co-lead Creative Director, Emily will lead logistics + dialogue around public engagement + culture + curatorial art practices.
Creative Directors
Dr Michael Mossman RAIA (Kuku Yalanji)
Jack Gillmer – Lilley RAIA (Worimi & Biripi)
Prof. Emily McDaniel (Wiradjuri)
Creative Sphere
Elle Davidson (Balanggarra)
Bradley Kerr RAIA (Quandamooka)
Kaylie Salvatori RAILA (Yuin)
Clarence Slockee (Bundjalung)
Ambassadors
Daniel Boyd (Kuku Yalanji)
Prof. Deborah Cheetham Fraillon AO FAHA (Yorta Yorta & Yuin)
Prof. Franca Tamisari
Branding & Graphics
Sarah Coleman
Production Manager
Erin Davidson
Commissoners Circle
Bridget Smyth LFRAIA
Janet Holmes à Court AC Hon. RAIA
Jane Jose OAM
Prof. Carey Lyon LFRAIA
Lisa Moore FRAIA
The Hon. Lisa Singh
Lucy Turnbull AO
Dirk Yates RAIA
Dr Cameron Bruhn Hon. FRAIA
Curatorial Committee
Claire McCaughan
Kate Goodwin Hon FRIBA
Maggie Edmond AM
Michael Jasper, Ivan Ling
Jane Cassidy FRAIA
Dr Cameron Bruhn Hon. FRAIA
Project Support
Justine Anderson RAIA
Loren Bates
Diego Carpentiero
Sam Choi
Liam Coe
COLA Studio
Adam Haddow FRAIA
Matthew Higginbottom
Jiwah
James Kennedy
Byron Kinnaird
Cornel Ozies
Kate Ryan
Eliza Salvatori
Kien Situ Van Young
Ebony Syron
Mitchell Thomas
Anita Toft
Adam Valentine
Matthew Venables
Hugo Vos
Winsor Kerr
Zion Engagement & Planning
In-Kind Partners
ARUP
ClayWorks
Euroluce
Fabricators
Daniel Burtt
COX Servicio
Guy Valentine
Sound Design
Prof. Deborah Cheetham Fraillon AO FAHA (Yorta Yorta & Yuin)
Donors
AKT Studios
Matthew Allen RAIA and Heidi Forbes
Atelier Chen Hung
Kirsten Bauer
Paul Berkemeier LFRAIA
Bird de la Coeur Architects
Dr Cameron Bruhn Hon. FRAIA
Elizabeth Carpenter FRAIA
Jane Cassidy LFRAIA
Louise Cox AO LFRAIA
DCM Bluelake Partners Pty Ltd (Daniel & Lyndell Droga)
DKO Architecture
George El Khouri OAM FRAIA
Dr Shaneen Fantin FRAIA
Karl Fender LFRAIA
FMD Architects
Annie Hensley
Alan Holbrook RAIA
Janet Holmes à Court AC Hon. RAIA
Hunt Architects
Ian Moore Architects
Keystone Architects
Simon Knott FRAIA and Tai Snaith
Kosloff Architecture
Kiong Lee RAIA
Prof. Carey Lyon LFRAIA
Ken Maher AO LFRAIA and Jane Jose OAM
MM Architects
Neeson Murcutt Neille
NH Architecture
Oculus
Claire Potter
Andrea Rice RAIA
Matteo Salval RAIA
Seidler Architectural Foundation
Bridget Smyth LFRAIA
Speculative Architecture
Studio Prineas
Turnbull Foundation
Welsh + Major
Jenny Woodward
The title of the Biennale Architettura 2025 is Intelligens. Natural. Artificial. Collective. Curated by the architect and engineer Carlo Ratti, the 19th International Architecture Exhibition will be about the built environment and the many disciplines that shape it. Architecture is at the centre – but not alone. It is part of an extended sphere that integrates art, engineering, biology, data science, social and political sciences, planetary systems sciences, and other disciplines – linking each and all of them to the materiality of urban space.
The Biennale is open to the public Saturday, 10 May – Sunday, 23 November 2025
Anthony Coupe LFRAIA, Julian Worrall RAIA, Emily Paech, Ali Gumillya Baker and Dr Sarah Rhodes
Australia’s identity is built on a double rupture: the expropriation of First Peoples’ lands; and the displacement of settler populations from their ancestral motherlands. The country’s wealth is based on an extractive relation to nature, regarding it as a standing reserve for exploitation. A dominion within the Commonwealth, Australia’s statehood is bound to the British Crown. This structure of relations to land, people, and nature are inscribed in the patterns of its settlements, its architecture the spatial language of this inscription.
Queenstown’ is the name we give to this pattern of relations. At the end of the second Elizabethan Age, as the voice of First Peoples calls for reckoning, and with planetary urgencies pressing, the settled configuration of this contested inheritance is under question. Queenstown is being unsettled. This exhibition explores and participates in this unsettling, weaving elements from real places and gleanings from current architectural intelligence in search of ingredients to contribute to Venice’s Laboratory of the Future.
Jefa Greenway and Tristan Wong
Inbetween premiered on Thursday 20 May, and will be exhibited this year throughout Australia, across the Pacific region and more broadly, as well as online. “Not being tied to the space in Venice has meant that we’ve been able to create something that can be experienced by a much larger audience. The great thing about the new format is that essentially anyone can access it and it has longevity beyond the dates of the Biennale.” explains Tristan. “This project isn’t a collection of artefacts; it’s forward looking and presents the innovative potential in learning from Indigenous methods and ideas. Embedding practices and knowledge that has been around for more than 60000 years into the way we design buildings creates opportunities for a new kind of architecture that is better for people, cities and the environment.”
Mauro Baracco, Louise Wright with Linda Tegg
Repair focused on Australian architecture that integrates built and natural systems to effect repair of the environment, and in so doing, mend or improve other societal, economic, and cultural conditions.
On entering the Pavilion, visitors found over 10,000 native Australian grassland plants arranged inside and outside of the Pavilion’s granite structure. This field of vegetation, titled Grasslands, allowed visitors to enter a physical dialogue between architecture and the endangered plant community – with just one percent of these threatened species left in their native Australian environment.
Amelia Holliday, Isabelle Toland (Aileen Sage) and Michelle Tabet
Using the pool as a lens through which to explore Australian cultural identity, the Australia Pavilion was transformed through the use of light, scent, sound, reflection and perspective to create a series of perceptual illusions within a designed landscape.
Eight prominent cultural leaders from various fields were selected to share their personal stories, using the device of the pool as a platform to explore the relationship between architecture and Australian cultural identity. These included Olympic gold medal winning swimmers Ian Thorpe and Shane Gould, environmentalist and 2007 Australian of the Year Tim Flannery, fashion designers Romance Was Born, writer of best-selling book The Slap Christos Tsiolkas, winner of the 2012 Miles Franklin Prize Anna Funder, Indigenous art curator Hetti Perkins and Australian rock-musician Paul Kelly.
The aim of the exhibition was to step outside the architect-to-architect discourse to show how a familiar, common object, the pool, is in fact pregnant with cultural significance, it is both artefact and catalyst of change. The Pool is about public space as a vital component to society and shows the many ways in which its public character is interpreted and occupied.
felix._Giles_Anderson+Goad
Augmented Australia provided a virtual journey through 23 of Australia’s most intriguing unbuilt projects through the use of a dedicated app.
Augmented Australia’s virtual experience began under a temporary Cloud Space, where display images of each project automatically triggered three-dimensional (3D) augmented models, animations and interviews when viewed through the app. Including a 1:1 scale virtual model of the new Australia Pavilion by Denton Corker Marshall overlaid on its construction site.
The exhibition then extended beyond the Giardini with real-world scale augmented models of each unbuilt project geographically positioned in various locations around Venice, marking the largest exhibition of its kind ever seen.
Anthony Burke, Gerard Reinmuth, with TOKO concept design
Formations provided a cross-section of the state of Australian architecture and singled out thirty-three unique practice structures corresponding to its agenda. The project was essentially made up of two components: the exhibition, with the unassuming Australia pavilion as its nucleus, and an accompanying catalogue. Of the total thirty-three surveyed practices, the pavilion exhibited six.
The optimism and pluralist sensibility of Formations was laudable. Indeed, it may soon be the case that, as Ole Bouman says, “architecture has become a universal access code, a mother key that may open countless doors in culture and in society.” However, in the meantime, for any current student or young practitioner of a discipline and body of knowledge in turmoil, the need for professional (role) models is acute. The emancipatory bent of Formations is more timely than ever.
John Gollings and Ivan Rijavec
Now and When explored the challenges facing our cities, engaging in timely issues that included sustainability, urban sprawl and density.
The ‘NOW’ component featured aerial views of Australian urban landscapes, including Melbourne, Sydney and Surfers Paradise, contrasted with giant mining pits at Kalgoorlie and Mt Newman by renowned architectural photographer John Gollings. The ‘WHEN’ component, overseen by Ivan Rijavec and produced by FloodSlicer, featured a sequence of ideas from 17 architectural collaborations of possible future urban spaces, including floating or submerged cities, or desert spaces.
Now and When exhibited on a completely new form of 3D stereoscopic technology, which goes beyond the latest cinematic release. Visitors were able to move around these urban scenes and experience the urbanised worlds from different perspectives.
Neil Durbach, Vince Frost, Wendy Lewin, Kerstin Thompson and Gary Warner
Abundant Australia explored the astonishing ability of Australian architects to blend new influences, dramatic landscapes and Australia’s unique multicultural society. Featuring over 140 architectural models of both domestic and commercial buildings from prominent Australian architects, including Ashton Raggatt McDougall, Denton Corker Marshall and Iredale Pedersen Hook, the exhibition revealed an architecture that is distinctly Australian.
Australia is one of 29 countries to be granted a permanent exhibition site within the Giardini della Biennale. In 2015, the Australia Council for the Arts unveiled Australia’s new permanent pavilion designed by Denton Corker Marshall. This new pavilion replaced a temporary exhibition space designed by Philip Cox in 1988, in use until 2013.
We gratefully acknowledge the Australia Council for the Arts for the use of the Australia Pavilion during the biennial architecture exhibition.
Janet Holmes a Court AC
Penelope Seidler
Anita Belgiorno-Nettis AM
Luca Belgiorno-Nettis AM
The Venice Architecture Biennale, the premier global platform for architectural innovation, presents partners with a unique opportunity to align with a prestigious international event that attracts a global audience of professionals, decision-makers, and design enthusiasts.
This exhibit comes at a critical moment in Australia’s history, following the Referendum No Vote on the Uluru Statement from the Heart. HOME serves as a timely and profound response, inviting a deeper understanding of First Nations perspectives and reinforcing the importance of truth-telling and cultural exchange.
To bring this vision to life, we are seeking your partnership. Sponsoring the Australia Pavilion will support the design team as they execute a dynamic public program in Venice and achieve their mission of sharing First Nations perspectives with the world. Moreover, your sponsorship will contribute to the Institute’s plans for a national display of the exhibition in 2026, ensuring its impact continues beyond Venice.
Sponsoring the Australia Pavilion offers your organisation a unique opportunity to advance its Reconciliation Action Plan by supporting First Nations procurement and meaningful engagement. By partnering, you will play a pivotal role in amplifying the voices and expertise of a First Nations design team, showcasing Country-led ideas and practices on a global stage.
The Australian Institute of Architects acknowledges First Nations peoples as the Traditional Custodians of the lands, waters, and skies of the continent now called Australia.
We express our gratitude to their Elders and Knowledge Holders whose wisdom, actions and knowledge have kept culture alive.
We recognise First Nations peoples as the first architects and builders. We appreciate their continuing work on Country from pre-invasion times to contemporary First Nations architects, and respect their rights to continue to care for Country.
