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arts · Monday 13 July 2026 · Various 
Assembly: Ireland at Venice
At O'Donoghue Theatre, University of Galway · Wellpark Road, Galway City, Co. Galway
At O'Donoghue Theatre, University of Galway · Wellpark Road, Galway City, Co. Galway
Ireland’s celebrated pavilion from the 2025 Venice Biennale of Architecture comes home this summer. Assembly, created by Cotter and Naessens Architects, won wide praise at Venice for the clarity of its thinking and the care of its making. Galway International Arts Festival brings it to the O’Donoghue Theatre at the University of Galway for a two-week run. It is free to visit and suits anyone curious about architecture, design, democracy, or simply what a thoughtfully built space feels like from the inside.
At the centre of the installation is a circular, modular structure hand-crafted from Irish beech wood. The design draws on a broad range of gathering typologies - choir stalls, parliamentary chambers, cattle marts - to produce something that feels both ancient and very much of the present. As you enter you cross a handwoven carpet made by Ceadogán Rugmakers, which sets the tone: this is a considered space, built by hand.
Integrated soundboxes play a layered polyphonic composition developed by sound artist David Stalling and architect-poet Michelle Delea. The audio draws on the Venetian tradition of cori spezzati (split choirs), weaving together music, poetry, interviews with Citizens’ Assembly participants, and recordings from the fabrication process.
The conceptual root is Ireland’s Citizens’ Assembly, established in 2016. Cotter and Naessens are interested in slower, more deliberate forms of public exchange - architecture designed around listening rather than spectacle. The result is a room that invites you to sit, look, and pay attention.
The O’Donoghue Theatre is on Wellpark Road on the University of Galway campus. City bus route 405 stops at the university entrance, a one-minute walk from the O’Donoghue Centre. If you are driving, the Galway Cathedral car park is about five minutes on foot and charges a €5 day rate. Galway is roughly two hours from Dublin via the M6; Iarnrod Eireann intercity trains from Heuston take around two hours fifteen minutes.
The university campus sits close to the Spanish Arch and the Long Walk, and GIAF typically runs other exhibitions and performances in the same July fortnight - worth checking the festival programme once you have seen Assembly. There is more to see in Galway and across Co. Galway.
Heading to O'Donoghue Theatre, University of Galway in Galway? Galway has plenty more to see. Read the Galway area guide, find what else is on, and explore the towns and villages nearby.