CRUNCH: Geology of Imminent Repair

About

This event celebrates the innovative theme of Geology of Britannic Repair in the British Pavilion at the 2025 Venice Architecture Biennale, awarded ‘Special Mention for Best National Participation’. Commissioned by the British Council, the pavilion reimagines architecture as a practice connected to land and geology in a non-extractive way – one geared towards repair, restitution and renewal.

Two members of the UK/Kenyan curatorial team, Kabage Karanja and Kathryn Yusoff, will outline their vision for the pavilion, linking the deep time of geology to the urgent need for repair today.

The Bartlett’s Eva Branscome and Murray Fraser then reflect on their contributions: Eva on the decision to drape a veil of beads over the pavilion’s exterior, drawing on research into the links between glass trade beads and British imperial architecture; and Murray on ‘Objects of Repair’ by the Palestine Regeneration Team, which explores fracture and repair in the architectures and geologies of the northern Rift Valley through salvaged materials and resilient construction.

By connecting historical legacies, geological time and architectural practice, the discussion highlights new ways to imagine a more reparative future.

This event is part of the flagship CRUNCH Series at The Bartlett School of Architecture.

Please note this event has limited capacity and operates on a first-come, first-served basis. Doors close at 18:40.

Speaker Biographies

Kathryn Yusoff is Professor of Inhuman Geography at Queen Mary University of London. Her award-winning transdisciplinary research (Association of American Geographers, 2021) addresses the colonial afterlives of geology and race, critical environmental studies and the in/humanities. She is author of Geologic Life and A Billion Black Anthropocenes or None.

Kabage Karanja is an architect, co-founder and director of Cave_bureau, an architectural and research firm based in Nairobi that he started alongside Stella Mutegi in 2014. He leads the research and aesthetic direction of the bureau and is currently a Louis I. Kahn Visiting Professor of Architectural Design at Yale School of Architecture.

Murray Fraser is Professor of Architecture and Global Culture at The Bartlett School of Architecture and Vice-Dean of Research for The Bartlett Faculty of the Built Environment. He has published extensively on design, architectural history and theory, urbanism, post-colonialism and cultural studies.

Eva Branscome is Professor of Architecture and Cultural Heritage at The Bartlett School of Architecture, UCL. Originally trained as an interior architect, her research spans two main strands: the links between built heritage and cultural practices in contemporary cities, and the modern architectural history of Central Europe. Her expertise in British architectural heritage was shaped by her role as caseworker for the Twentieth Century Society, securing statutory protection for over 50 modern historic buildings. She is increasingly engaged with examining architecture’s complicity in social injustice, co-organising the 2023 SAHGB conference Constructing Coloniality: British Imperialism and the Built Environment and the 2024 Ongoing and Emerging Discourses in African Architectural Practices conference at the University of the Witwatersrand, the largest event of its kind in Africa. She also writes on contested heritage, including the toppled statue of Bristol slave-trader Edward Colston.

https://www.ucl.ac.uk/bartlett/events/2025/sep/crunch-geology-imminent-repair