LONDON, ENGLAND.- Details of the exhibition for the British Pavilion at the Venice Biennale can be revealed for the first time as it reaches completion this week. Echo City, developed under the leadership of Jeremy Till, Director of Architecture at the University of Sheffield, is an "urban register" describing Sheffield at a variety of scales from 1:1 to 1:10 million. The 1:1 room is an installation of found objects from a project in the inner-city neighbourhood of Sharrow initiated by the art collective Encounters; 1:100 features architectural projects by Sauerbruch Hutton, Hawkins Brown and Studio Egret West, and Mecanoo; 1:10,000 is a literary and photographic journey written in the streets of Sheffield by writer Tim Etchells and photographer Hugo Glendinning; and 1:10,000,000 is Martyn Ware’s soundscape projecting Sheffield's relationship with the world at large.

The central exhibit is an interactive model developed by Jim Prevett which invites visitors to reconfigure urban elements at a variety of scales from the surrounding rooms. Till comments: “Architects tend to focus on the 1:100 and in this eschew the dynamics of the other scales and the rich interplay between them. Their main loss is an understanding of the settings for social and political life”. The British Council’s panel of advisors: Tom Dyckhoff, Farshid Moussavi, Alice Rawsthorn and Deyan Sudjic recommended an exhibition that examined the issues facing Britain's regional cities, rather than London. In response to the indignation roused by this decision amongst certain London architects, the British Council's Head of Design & Architecture, Emily Campbell, who is Commissioner of the Pavilion said: "They were hasty in their scorn. The phenomenon of cities once great on account of reasons that no longer exist is a tragic condition to which we must find convincing answers".

Sheffield, meanwhile, has been getting a lot of attention from other quarters. Sheffield musicians Richard Hawley and the Arctic Monkeys are on the shortlist for the Nationwide Mercury Music Prize, Britain's most prestigious music award; Sheffield's iconic cooling towers are the most popular contenders for Channel 4's Big Art Project; and Stirling Prize-shortlisted architects O'Donnell & Tuomey are working on a new John Lewis for Sheffield. The director of this 2006 Venice Biennale of Architecture is Richard Burdett, Centennial Professor of Architecture and Urbanism and LSE, and its theme is the interaction of architecture and social dynamics in the world’s major cities. Other British work featured in his international exhibition and in the Italian Pavilion which he curates, includes: Dixon Jones’ Exhibition Road Scheme for London; the Victoria Embankment improvement by MJP Architects; Dongtan Island Eco-City in Shanghai by Arup Associates; the Kartal Masterplan for Istanbul by Zaha Hadid Architects; the East River Masterplan for New York City by Richard Rogers Partnership with SHoP Architects, NYC; and a series of film installations by Neutral. The Architecture Foundation will be streaming a blog from the Padiglione Italia and the Royal College of Art architecture students will be presenting a major research project in the Arsenale. A significant amount of the urban research for the Arsenale initiates in the Cities Programme/Urban Age Project at the London School of Economics.

The exhibition has been conceived and developed by Jeremy Till together with the following Sheffield-based creative team: Ian Anderson, graphic designer (The Designers Republic, Sheffield) Encounters, Sheffield (Ruth Ben-Tovim, Trish O’Shea & Jim Prevett, cross-disciplinary artists) Tim Etchells (writer and theatre director, Forced Entertainment, Sheffield) & Hugo Glendinning (photographer, long term Forced Entertainment collaborator) The Illustrious Company (Martyn Ware: musician, founder of the Human League and Heaven 17; and sound designer) University of Sheffield School of Architecture (Jeremy Till and Sarah Wigglesworth, architects) Britain at La Biennale di Venezia The British Pavilion was designed by an Italian architect in 1887 as a tearoom to serve the Giardini di Castello. In 1909 it was acquired by a private committee of enthusiasts as the national pavilion for British art, and was modestly remodelled by A.E. Rickards as an exhibition gallery. Control of the Pavilion was transferred to the Department of Overseas Trade in 1932 and subsequently to the newly founded British Council in 1937. The building was extensively refurbished by the British Council in 1995, La Biennale di Venezia centenary year. The British Council The British Council is the UK’s international organization for educational opportunities and cultural relations. We operate in 220 towns and cities in 110 countries and territories worldwide. We build relationships and understanding between people in the UK and other countries and increase appreciation of the UK’s ideas and achievements overseas. The areas we focus on are creativity, education and civil society. We are a non-political organization which operates at arm’s length from government. Our income in 2005/06 is expected to be £501 million, of which our grant-in-aid from the British government is £184 million.