ASSEMBLE: People, places and communities

Assemble is a multi-disciplinary collective working across architecture, design and art. Founded in 2010 to undertake a single self-built project, Assemble has since delivered a diverse and award-winning body of work, while retaining a democratic and cooperative working method that enables built, social and research-based work at a variety of scales, both making things and making things happen.
James’ talk will focus on Assemble’s early work and how they produced innovative projects that were resourceful and responsive to the challenges they saw as young people and practitioners in London and around the UK.
He has worked on a wide range of Assemble projects as architect, construction manager and fabricator including Atelier Luma, where Assemble renovated a disused stone train depot into workshops and exhibition spaces, and the renewal of the historic Durham Wharf studios into affordable accommodation for young artists in Hammersmith.
In 2025 James set up Common Treasures, a new organisation focussing on the role for design to address challenges facing rural places, economies and communities. He is working with the Ecological Land Co-operative, an organisation that aims to build a living working countryside in ways that are equitable and ecological, through democratising access to land and supporting the development of better networks of local, regenerative food and material production, and developing low cost and low impact housing for land workers.
James has taught in architecture schools in the UK and abroad, leading a postgraduate design research unit at London Metropolitan University for 5 years before teaching at the Ecole Polytechnic Federale in Lausanne since 2021.
Copies of both Assemble’s recent book, Building Collective, and Volumes 1 & 2 of Common Treasures, which focus on issues including food, farming, land, housing, planning and construction will available on the day.

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