The project will be led by UK-based curators Dr Guan Lee and Mike Lim alongside a UK curatorial team including Maria McLintock and Ben Swaby Selig.
They will work with Penang-based artisans Ng Chi Wang, Lee Shao Chin and Koh Eng Keat.
The organisation invited submissions from collaborative UK-Malaysian teams featuring architects, exhibition designers, curators, educators, researchers or other disciplines.
The winning team was announced last week, shortly before the EU announced it would be cutting its funding to this year’s arts biennale following a decision to re-admit Russia to the exposition.
Even so, the AJ understands that plans for the British Pavilion in 2027 are continuing as set out by the British Council last week.
The winning team was chosen from a six-strong shortlist. The winning proposal – Festival of Hungry Ghosts – will explore impermanence in architecture, diaspora culture and how migration transforms living traditions present in Malaysia and the world today.
The proposal takes inspiration from the Hungry Ghost Festival, held in south-east Asian countries, at which people pay homage to their deceased ancestors using ceremonial paper structures.
The open call for a collaborative team follows a UK-Kenya collaboration at last year’s British Pavilion (pictured below). The latest commission sets out to demonstrate ‘courage and boldness’ and to influence architecture in the UK, Malaysia, south-east Asia and beyond. the British Council says.
The estimated £200,000 installation within the pavilion at the centre of the Venice Giardini will build on the British Council’s UK-Malaysia Human-Nature programme, which explores human relationships with the natural environment. The commission also coincides with the 70th anniversary of UK-Malaysian diplomatic relations in 2027.
The winning team said: ‘We are thrilled to bring the Festival of Hungry Ghosts to the British Pavilion at La Biennale di Venezia 2027, as a joyful celebration of diasporic culture and the living traditions that travel, transform, and endure through migration.
‘Marking the opening and closing of the underworld, the festival is shaped by acts of care for both ancestors and wandering spirits. At its core is a construction tradition where impermanence is not a limitation, but a guiding logic.
‘A festival within a festival, this living ritual has travelled to Malaysia and now to Venice, transforming with each passage. To build for disappearance is, we believe, one of the most radical acts of architectural thinking available today.’
British Council director of architecture design and fashion Sevra Davis said: ‘As we celebrate 70 years of diplomatic relations between the UK and Malaysia, we are excited to work with a curatorial team whose proposal brings together architecture, ritual and cultural memory.
‘Drawing on Malaysian traditions of paper structures created for the Festival of Hungry Ghosts, the exhibition will explore how acts of making and remaking can shape our relationships with nature, place and one another.’
Jazreel Goh, country director for Malaysia at the British Council, said: ‘The UK-Malaysia collaboration at the 2027 Venice Biennale presents an exciting opportunity to celebrate creative collaboration between the UK and Malaysia on the global stage on the occasion of 70 years of diplomatic relations between the two countries.
‘The appointed team’s ambition to use the exhibition as a means of exploring ritual architecture, migration and regenerative design is both timely and relevant.’
Last year’s Venice Architecture Biennale was curated by the Italian architect Carlo Ratti. The British Pavilion was curated by Kabage Karanja and Stella Mutegi – co-founders and directors of Cave_bureau, based in Nairobi, Kenya, together with Owen Hopkins, director of the Farrell Centre at Newcastle University, and Kathryn Yusoff, professor of inhuman geography at Queen Mary University.
In November, Wang Shu and Lu Wenyu, founders of Amateur Architecture Studio, were announced as curators of the 2027 biennale.
For the fourth time, the hunt for the British Pavilion team has been launched prior to the announcement of the biennale’s central theme. The winning team will have the opportunity to respond to the theme once it is announced.
Alongside Davies, the selection committee for the two-stage contest included Dato’ Hamdan Abdul Majeed, managing director of Think City; Chris Williamson, president of the RIBA; Tara Gbolade, co-founder of Gbolade Design Studio; and Albert Williamson-Taylor, co-founding director at AKT II.
The winning will be paid a participation fee of £25,000 to cover time and work required to meet the deliverables required of the commission.
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