What is Assemble?
Frances Edgerley: Assemble is a collective of 17 designers, architects-in-training, builders and organizers.
Jane Hall: It is becoming ever harder to define as everyone individually finds their thing. I would also describe us as artists, writers and researchers, and sometimes some of us are play workers, activists and teachers. But that is to define us by activity so the better question is, what does Assemble do?
What did you start by building, and why?
FE: Our first project was the transformation of a derelict petrol station into a cinema. We wanted to imagine other possibilities for that typology of urban infrastructure. We also wanted to see if we could build something and create somewhere people would come. We built the project ourselves. This stemmed from, and has since fuelled, a shared passion in understanding how the world is made.
