Assembly
After Venice, Ireland’s acclaimed pavilion returns for a national tour shaped by conversation, sound, craft, and collective reflection.
“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; it is a multi-sensory installation, a soundscape to be inhabited, a space to be heard.”
— Cotter & Naessens Architects
Following its presentation at the 19th International Architecture Exhibition of the Venice Biennale 2025, Assembly, Ireland’s national pavilion by Cotter & Naessens Architects, embarks on a national tour across the country that includes two major arts festivals this summer.
Part installation, part resonant chamber, part civic proposition, Assembly is a multisensory environment that explores architecture as a space for gathering, listening, and collective reflection. Inspired by Ireland’s Citizens’ Assembly, established in 2016 to bring together demographically representative residents to deliberate urgent social and political issues ranging from marriage equality to biodiversity loss, the project reflects on new forms of participatory democracy and asks how architecture might support more open, inclusive, and non-hierarchical forms of public exchange.
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 extends this proposition beyond Venice, bringing the pavilion into dialogue with audiences across Ireland and inviting new communities to inhabit, activate, and contribute to the work.
Functionally and poetically, the pavilion reflects on assembly as both a process of making and a condition of being together. Harnessing renewable materials, skilled craftsmanship, and collaborative knowledge, Assembly was hand-crafted from Irish beech trees sourced and seasoned by woodworker Alan Meredith and features a carpet handwoven by Ceadogán Rugmakers to welcome visitors into its interior. Integrated throughout the structure, a chorus of soundboxes emits fragments of a spatialised polyphonic composition inspired by the Venetian tradition of cori spezzati. Created by Michelle Delea and David Stalling, the sound work weaves together music, poetry, interviews with Citizens’ Assembly participants and designers, and recordings documenting the pavilion’s own fabrication, transforming the structure into a living instrument animated by myriad voices.
The Ireland tour presents the original installation alongside the premiere of a new 27-minute documentary directed and produced by Michelle Delea. Structured around the four stanzas of the poem ‘Assembly’, the film traces the design, fabrication, and installation of the pavilion through moving image and sound, documenting the collaborative processes and material labour that shaped the work.
The tour begins at Cork Midsummer Festival, where Assembly will inhabit the UCC Centre for Executive Education on Lapps Quay from June 14–21, 2026. On June 14 at 4pm, Assembly Conversations, chaired by Emmett Scanlon, director of the Irish Architecture Foundation, will open a public discussion around architecture, participation, and civic space.
The exhibition will then travel to Galway International Arts Festival, presented at the O’Donoghue Theatre, University of Galway, from July 13–27, 2026. A second Assembly Conversations, chaired by award-winning Irish architect Dr John McLaughlin, will take place on July 14 at noon, inviting audiences into a wider reflection on the architectures of dialogue and assembly.
On September 5, 2026, the documentary travels to Dunamaise Arts Centre and Theatre in Portlaoise for a film screening, followed by a discussion with Alan Meredith, the maker, and David Stalling, the sound artist, that explores the making of sound and space within the pavilion, and the relationship between craft, resonance, and collective experience.
The tour concludes at Architecture at the Edge at Mick Lally Theatre, Galway, on September 26, 2026. Presented in dialogue with the festival’s theme, Le Chéile, the film screening extends the festival’s exploration of citizens’ assemblies and asks how architecture might foster more open forms of communication, participation, and democratic engagement.
With support from: Royal Institute of Architects of Ireland, Dublin City Council, Cork City Council, Laois County Council |Creative Ireland Laois, Jacobs Engineering, Cork Centre for Architectural Education, Henry J Lyons and United Hardware. Technical support from: Ceadogán Rugs, Punch Consulting Engineers, iGuzzini, Innosonix, Arper spA, Casambi, Thibaud Keiller.
