The Architects’ Journal Architecture News & Buildings
Assemble is a 22-strong multidisciplinary collective of architectural creators, researchers, designers and artists. Featuring in the 40 under 40 are 16 of its members – aged 31 to 34 years old – Anthony Engi Meacock, Alice Edgerley, Amica Dall, Adam Wills, Fran Edgerley, Giles Smith, James Binning, Jane Hall, Joe Halligan, Karim Khelil, Louis Schulz, Mathew Leung, Maria Lisogorskaya, Paloma Strelitz, Holly Briggs and Lewis Jones.
Founded in 2009 shortly after several Assemble members graduated from the University of Cambridge, the studio has achieved a lot in just 11 years. This youthful collaborative team was awarded the 2015 Turner Prize for its work regenerating the Granby Four Streets area of Liverpool and co-creating the Granby Workshop social enterprise. It also won a high-profile competition for a £1.8 million art gallery for Goldsmiths College in south-east London, defeating previous 40 under 40 laureate 6a architects whose founder, Tom Emerson, also taught at Cambridge.
Winter garden in the Granby Four Streets development
Assemble’s playful projects have included the pop-up Cineroleum, Folly for a Flyover, and a ‘Clay Station’ commission for Art on the Underground. At the core of Assemble’s community-focused approach is the pooling of skills and resources in shared affordable workspaces, such as Sugarhouse Studios, which moved from Stratford to Bermondsey, and the new Fabric Floor in Brixton.
With its latest endeavour – the Dome View Yard workspaces and studios in Greenwich – soon to open its doors, Assemble sees its next task as bringing together collaborators for the ‘hard work of radically reframing how and why we build’ amid rising social injustice and the threat posed by the climate emergency.
Assemble's other staff members include Emily Wickham, Kaye Song, Harry Johnson, Seyi Adelekun, Ikesha Patrick and Owen Lacey.
Milestones
2009 Assemble founded to pursue ideas originating from their studies which had been ‘hard to pursue in employment’
2010 Creates Cineroleum, a self-initiated project transforming a disused petrol station on Clerkenwell Road into a temporary cinema
2011 Opens Sugarhouse Studios in Stratford, which later expands to include the Yardhouse workspace and is then relocated to Bermondsey
2015 Wins Turner Prize for work with Granby Four Streets Community Land Trust restoring houses and creating a new social enterprise in Liverpool
2018 Repurposes a former public baths boiler house to create the Goldsmiths Centre for Contemporary Art, won in an open competition four years earlier
2020 Makes shortlist for Festival UK* 2022 and is one of 30 teams to receive £100,000 to draw up collaborative ideas focusing on science and technology for the Brexit celebration
Assemble: ‘Making is at the centre of our practice’
Brexit bash: Assemble shortlisted in £3m Festival UK* 2022 contest
Assemble raises the roof on Goldsmiths Centre for Contemporary Art
Assemble wins contest to create new Wellcome Collection gallery
Assemble wins 2015 Turner Prize
AJ 40 under 40 in association with
