Assemble are a collective of 15 whose work addresses the relationship between people and the built environment. Assemble take a hands-on, collaborative approach, and whilst their work usually includes design it rarely starts or ends there, often employing a range of means from the social to the infrastructural to make spaces which enable independence; self-authorship, creativity and difference.
Assemble started working together informally in 2009 and delivered their first project, the Cineroleum, in 2010. Working in their free time and around other jobs, they built the Cineroleum from borrowed, recycled and industrial materials, with around 200 friends, volunteers and passers-by. The collective was established through this project has retained a non-hierarchical structure and interdisciplinary ethos and now works across the UK, for both independent community groups and public bodies, and on both self-initiated and commissioned projects.
Assemble have been nominated for the Design Museum’s Design of the Year in 2012 and 2016, the 2014 Iakov Chernikhov Prize, the 2017 EU Mies van der Rohe Award and won the Turner Prize in 2015.
Ethel Baraona Pohl is the co-founder of dpr-barcelona, an investigative studio through which she disseminates content relating to architecture as a medium for and expression of human development.
