A fifth of all architects in this year’s Venice Biennale will hail from Britain, including Zaha Hadid and Norman Foster.

Caruso St John and Farshid Moussavi are also among the 11 contributors appointed by director David Chipperfield from a 56-strong list which includes international stars Peter Zumthor, Herzog & de Meuron and Frank Gehry.

All will be working to the theme Common Ground, which Chipperfield said would explore what “architects share in common”. As part of the selection process, every participant was asked to collaborate with someone .

Foster’s contribution will focus on his HSBC building in Hong Kong, and how it has become part of the cultural life of the city, while Hadid will design an installation looking at the history of thin shell structures.

Patrick Lynch, Eric Parry and Haworth Tompkins are working together on a depiction of public life in London, focusing on the City, the South Bank and Westminster, and will design a performance space for theatre and talks.

“London energises people to live out fantastical lives,” said Lynch.

Fat is proposing a Museum of Copies, located inside a scale replica of Palladio’s Villa Rotunda, while Sergison Bates will curate an exhibition about social housing.

Caruso St John, meanwhile, has invited a small group of European architects to work on its section.

“These have been selected to show how large-scale projects as well as the smallest interior have an equal capacity to be powerful architecture,” said Adam Caruso.

Muf, which curated the British Pavilion at the 2010 biennale, will create an installation based its renovation of the Altab Ali Park in Whitechapel, and has also proposed breaking the walls of the Arsenale in places. Alison Crawshaw, also from Muf, will present works based on her research on illegal construction in Rome.

Architectural writer Steve Parnell will curate a reading room to show the role architectural magazines play in modern architecture, while O’Donnell and Tuomey are planning a stacked-timber installation in collaboration with an Irish joiner.

Chipperfield said: “I want to… reinforce our understanding of architectural culture, and to emphasise the philosophical and practical continuities that define it. The title Common Ground also has a strong connotation of the ground between buildings, the spaces of the city.”

Race to Finish

David Chipperfield has just five months left to put together the 2012 Architecture Biennale, following his unusually late appointment as director last December.

He hopes to add to the official budget of €1.5 million by raising a further €1 million in sponsorship.

The 13th International Architecture Biennale will be held from August 29 to November 25.