Assemble: Community Builders, Collaborative Makers, Play Enthusiasts

By Something Curated

Profiles - 22 Apr 2016 -

Assemble is an 18-strong team of artists and designers working in and around East London, with a strong focus on colour, sustainability, cultural engagement, and most of all, play. The young studio’s interdisciplinary insight, community focus and energetic sensibility is the force behind its growing portfolio of comissions and awards, including the new Goldsmiths Art Centre and the 2015 Turner Prize.

In a 2015 collaboration between Assemble studio and artist Simon Terrill, post-war concrete playground structures were recreated in pastel foam to present three unique opportunities for play. — In a 2015 collaboration between Assemble studio and artist Simon Terrill, post-war concrete playground structures were recreated in pastel foam to present three unique opportunities for play at the RIBA public gallery from June to August of that year. While mimicking the Brutalist to a T, the squishy and bright installation was rapidly torn apart by dozens of stomping feet and playground races. Assemble’s project is both a playful and poetic liberation of Brutalism from its sombre history as well as an ironic fulfillment of the movement’s obviously failed purpose, which defended the aesthetic of the stark minimalist buildings as a way to ultimately “free up more space for play.”

Softcore Brutalism, Underway Film Houses, and Community Craft Dens

As well as being the first non-artists to receive the Turner Prize, this is first time a collective (as opposed to individually practicing artists) has won in its 31-year history. The £25,000 prize, which is awarded annually by Tate gallery to a British artist or group under the age of 50, was awarded to Assemble for their Liverpool Regeneration project, which involved the reconstruction of Granby Four Streets in Toxteth, Liverpool, which comprise a cluster of terraced houses, originally built around 1900 to house a number of artisans. Acquired by the council in 1981, these buildings had since undergone several unsuccessful attempts at renovation.

For the project, Assemble worked with Granby Four Streets CLT and Steinbeck Studios to let history set the narrative, ultimately presenting a long-term, pro- and inter-active future for the area that channels the work already done by local residents as well as reactivating the original purpose of the development. The project involved the refurbishment of ten houses and many empty shops, the planting of gardens and creation of new outdoor public space, plus offering building jobs and training to local people.

Stemming from the project is Granby Workshop, a new social enterprise that makes and sells handmade products in collaboration with local artists and craftspeople. GW was launched through the Turner Prize Exhibition 2015, where visitors to the exhibit could pre-order bespoke furniture, artwork and various household objects that were made by hand directly in Granby. While the display unit for the Turner Prize 2015 exhibit featured a custom-built showroom that shows off the products of the Workshop, it sparked an entire network of transaction, communication, and creativity which lights up the area, connecting both Granby to the rest of the world and to each other.

Other noteworthy projects, hand-picked from a robust project list that is too large to list, include the Goldsmiths Art Centre, Folly for a Flyover, the Blackhorse Workshop.

Goldsmiths Art Gallery