Assembly

5 Sept 2026 2pm

Following its presentation at the 19th International Architecture Exhibition of La Biennale di Venezia 2025, Assembly, Ireland’s national pavilion by Cotter & Naessens Architects, embarks on a national tour across the country 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.

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 Laois based master maker Alan Meredith 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 sound artist 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 includes a new 27-minute documentary Making Assembly 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.

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.

(running time 27 mins film and 33 mins discussion followed by Q+A)