Archinect - News

Assemble completes new Goldsmiths Centre for Contemporary Art, opening September 8

2018-09-06T20:44:00-04:00

It is an inventive fusion of the industrial and the crafted that runs throughout the project [...] Throughout, there are details that show the architects’ interest in how the building has been made and altered over time, and an awareness that their interventions are part of the ongoing life of the place, forming a richly layered canvas for artists to add to in turn.

The Guardian's Oliver Wainwright gives a first look into the new Goldsmiths Centre for Contemporary Art, which opens September 8. The project is the first permanent building of the young Turner Prize-winning collective Assemble, who won the competition in 2014 to transform the former Victorian-era bath house into a new art gallery complex. “It was a brave choice from Goldsmiths, but the risk has paid off,” Wainwright writes.

Assemble-converted Goldsmiths CCA gallery to open in September

2018-03-01T14:53:00-05:00

London gets a major new contemporary art gallery this autumn with the launch of the long-awaited Goldsmiths Centre for Contemporary Art on 8 September. [...] Assemble, the London-based architects who won the Turner Prize in 2015, were selected in 2014 to convert former public baths and Victorian water tanks on the south London campus into the new 1,000 sq. m centre housing eight gallery spaces.

Goldsmiths CCA under construction. Photo via the school's website.

Previously: Goldsmiths to Build Public Art Gallery

A factory-making factory: Assemble revives manufacturing (sort of)

2017-04-13T17:39:00-04:00

By creating a machine that extrudes shaped clay, Assemble have created a factory that places an emphasis on the physical creation of one's environment (as well as the spontaneous ideas that can develop from working with materials and processes).

It's a throwback to the late 19th/early 20th century days when factories weren't necessarily about dehumanizing automation but rather more about the complexity of manufacturing using all sorts of tools and last-minute problem-solving techniques. This video by Vice gives a thorough tour of the concept, process, and blue-and-white-clad result of Assemble's "A Factory As It Might Be"...

Buy Assemble's Yardhouse studio for just £150,000

2016-12-20T17:03:00-05:00

Last year, they won the Turner Prize—the first architects to snag the coveted art prize. Now, you can own a piece of art-architecture history by buying Assemble’s Yardhouse, the structure that formerly sheltered their workspace in east London. And it costs just £150,000 (not including VAT).

The building, a modular two-storey, three-bay structure, has been disassembled and placed in storage. According to the listing, this was always part of the plan. “The architects conceived the project to demonstrate how plots with short-term vacancies can be used to provide temporary workplaces, which can be demounted and reassembled elsewhere at the end of the tenancy.”

With an interior space of 250 square meter, the colorful tile-clad studio is split into three aisles lined with studios. The center is a double-height atrium. According to the listing, the new owner could maintain the layout or devise their own.

Turner Prize shortlist announced

2016-05-13T10:21:00-04:00

Anthea Hamilton, Michael Dean, Helen Marten and Josephine Pryde have been selected to compete for the £25,000 prize. Hamilton has been included for her work that focuses on fetishism, while sculptor Dean was chosen for pieces made from salvaged materials. The winner will be announced on 6 December after an exhibition of works.

Read more about last years surprise winner Assemble (the collective themselves being most surprised):

Editor's Picks #442

2016-03-03T13:23:00-05:00

ICYMI Will Galloway penned a reflection on a workshop he instigated at Keio University, with members of Assemble, Paloma Strelitz and James Binning (pre Turner Prize). The studio ended with students building a very rough and very temporary Onsen. The three later discussed, the history of Assemble, architecture’s "long history of collective action" and "amazingly entrepreneurial architectural practices".

Donna Sink loved their take on radicalism "as just being a reasonable way to practice. They believe they're not radical at all. I'm onboard with removing the word ‘non-traditional’ from the descriptor ‘non-traditional practice’ when it comes to architecture of this kind. It's just practice, which is a broad world."

Plus, Amelia Taylor-Hochberg published an interview with Steven Holl and Kevin Lippert (founder of Princeton Architectural Press) about Pamphlet Architecture. rprt frm th heartland praised Pamphlet as "chewy and lovely".

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Over at Architect Magazine Blaine Brownell, AIA, e...

What's the Big Deal‽ – Assemble, Serpentine and YAP winners, and BIG controversy on Archinect Sessions #52, with special guest co-host Will Galloway

2016-02-11T18:25:00-05:00

Long-time Archinector and reliably sane commentator Will Galloway joins us from his base in Tokyo to discuss the weekly news, including his interview with Assemble, crucially taking place mere weeks before they won the Turner Prize. While news from Bjarke Ingels Group commanded the feistiest comment threads this week – with renderings of BIG's spiraling Hudson Yards tower provoking debate over craft in skyscrapers, and the firm being selected to design the Serpentine Pavilion for 2016 in their last last eligible year – recent news included big wins for firms both star-studded and unknown. MoMA PS1 named Escobedo Solíz Studio as the 2016 winner of its Young Architects Program, for their "Weaving the Courtyard" submission, while Dame Zaha Hadid received her RIBA Gold Medal (the first woman to win solo). Lastly, for you planning wonks, we throw in a brief discussion of a controversial proposed ballot measure to halt big developments in Los Angeles.

Listen to episode 52 of Archinect Se...

Assemble wins Turner Prize, becoming first architects to win "UK's most prestigious art prize"

2015-12-07T16:20:00-05:00

The 18 members of London-based Assemble were named winners of the 31st Turner prize on Monday night, receiving their £25,000 prize from the Sonic Youth co-founder and artist Kim Gordon at an awards dinner broadcast live on Channel 4 from Tramway, Glasgow. Assemble are the first non-artists, in the strictest sense of the word, to win the prize. They were nominated for their work tackling urban dereliction in Toxteth, Liverpool...

Assemble, the architecture-ish collective known for their direct action urban interventions, has just won the prestigious Turner Prize. Working "across the fields of art, architecture and design," they are the first non-artists, in the strictest sense, to win the prize, and the first whose work so directly contends with the urban environment.

Specifically, Assemble was praised for their work in Toxteth, Liverpool, that involved using design to improve the living conditions and the houses of a derelict area called Granby Four Streets.

"[Assemble] draw[s] on long traditions of artistic and collective initiatives that experiment in art, design and architecture," the judges stated. "In doing so they offer alternative models to how societies can work. The long-term collaboration between Granby Four Streets and Assemble shows the importance of artistic practice being able to drive and shape urgent issues.”

With their Granby Four Streets project, Assemble created a showroom to display product...

Architecture as urban regeneration: Theaster Gates, Art + Practice, and Assemble

2015-11-03T18:19:00-05:00

Most architects don’t build economic engines into their projects, and [Assemble's Anna] Lisogorskaya is quick to note that this type of intervention doesn’t make sense everywhere. [...] But she does argue that things such as economic sustainability and local jobs are inherently interconnected with any effort to rehabilitate a neighbourhood. The architecture is only part of the project, and can only do so much on its own.

Assemble crafts its own model, becomes the first architecture studio to be nominated for Turner Prize

2015-08-19T15:16:00-04:00

Founded five years ago, Assemble forged their reputation using otherwise valueless materials (demolition waste, reconstituted foam) and places (the abandoned gas station, the nook beneath a highway overpass) to develop ingenious temporary venues [...] Their practical vision has more to do with how buildings are used than with their grandeur; and it is often the users, as much as the architects, who steer the projects.

Assemble has been gaining a lot of attention recently for the inventive, recession-friendly approach to architecture. From converting an abandoned gas station into a cinema to placing a folly under a highway overpass, they're discovering new and unexpected modes (and locations) for architecture, without even having a licensed practitioner on board.

This October, Assemble will participate in the Chicago Architecture Biennial. And they're the first design studio to be nominated for the Turner Prize!

Multi-media art interventions coming to London's Victoria tube line

2015-07-01T11:40:00-04:00

The project, called Underline, will include the underground’s first music commission and a plan by the Turner prize-nominated architectural collective Assemble to improve what is regarded as one of the most unloved station exits on the entire network, at Seven Sisters in north London.

Organized by "Art on the Underground", a group that curates contemporary artworks for display in the London Underground, the new project will bring a variety of art, music and architectural interventions to the Victoria Line. Commissions selected to be part of the Underline are not simply public art projects – the interventions involve real proposals to improving the quality of experience for both commuters and workers on London's tube.

The whole tube line is under the curatorial purview, with architecture firm Assemble selected to focus particularly the Seven Sisters stop, known for its "anti-social behaviour problems". Artist Giles Round's Underline project, called "Design Work Leisure", will produce "prototypes of functional objects that can be used on the tube: a new ceramic tile for patch repairs on the existing tiles, for example, or new clocks, lighting or direction signs." Film and musical performances will also pepper the Victoria Line during Underline's run.

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