The culture of living closer together

Assemblage

Assemble:
A Contradictory Space

Words by Cat McGauran

Blueprint City

Playable
Cities: Hilary O'Shaughnessy

Words by Jana Perković

Blueprint City

How Finland is Ending Homelessness: Juha Kaakinen

Words by Cat McGauran

Perspectives

Ugly-beautiful Australia

Words by Eugenia Lim
Photos by Tom Ross

Eyes

The Architecture of
Least Resistance

Photos and words by Tom Ross

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Latest Articles

Eyes

The Architecture of Least Resistance

Photographer Tom Ross has a keen eye for capturing architecture and its atmospheres. He's noticed Geelong, his former stomping ground, transform into Australia’s fastest-growing regional centre. Urbanisation has hit the Surf Coast, bringing a property and population boom and growing inequity. He reflects on the changing corridor between Melbourne and Geelong: the urban, suburban and peri-urban.

Perspectives

A Saturday spent at Women Design

To commemorate 100 years of women's vote in Britain, a two-day symposium on women in design took place at Design Museum, promising to explore historical injustices, and analyse contemporary design culture. Kate Riggs was in attendance.

Blueprint City

Amsterdam Social Housing: A Primer

The residential variety across Amsterdam city is stunning. Some rents are high, but many more are controlled, kept affordable by non-profit associations that deliver the bulk of housing in the Netherlands. From the expressive brickwork of early 20th-century workers’ dwellings to a new generation of refugee-inclusive youth housing, Amelyn Ng explores the system of affordable housing allocation in Amsterdam.

Ears

AP x Liquid Architecture: Lilly Kane

Ritual Community Music is a year-long program of music experiences curated around the age-long association that music has to ritual, and ritual has to community. To bring the summer closer, and to close the year, local legends of experimental music Liquid Architecture bring us a mix by Lilly Kane which explores what a transnational community sounds like. Mat Spisbah, the program curator, introduces the last event of the year, a night of experimental rave on 8th December at Howler.

Living not Decorating

Nomadic Life: Danielle de Picciotto & Alexander Hacke

Danielle de Picciotto and Alexander Hacke, who perform as hackedepicciotto, are legends of Berlin's independent music scene. They share their experiences, and what they have learnt from living on the road with Cat McGauran.

Stories

Latest Happenings

Transitions Film Festival

When: 21 February - 8 March 2019
Where: Cinema Nova, Brunswick Mechanics Institute and Loop Project Space & Bar
How much: See website for details
More info: Transitions Film Festival

Mandela My Life: The Official Exhibition

When: until 3 March 2019
Where: Melbourne Museum, Nicholson St, Carlton
How much: See website for details
More info: Melbourne Museum

Happenings

Issue 10 — Out Now

Launch party

In Print

#10: Housing

In partnership with MPavilion, issue #10 addresses one of the most pressing global concerns. From ‘housing first’ approaches in Finland, to housing associations in the Netherlands and innovative financing in Melbourne, we look at how humans will live in the future, and how we can ensure that all citizens are provided for.

Editorial

AP#10: Housing

Who gets to decide how we all reside? Jana Perković and Eugenia Lim introduce the tenth print issue of Assemble Papers, dedicated to housing for all, and published in partnership with MPavilion.

Assemblage

Carme Pinós: A Social Constellation

For Catalan architect Carme Pinós, form follows social responsibility – beauty is a by-product of an architecture that places people, memory, context and physics first. Pinós's Mediterranean sensibility unfolds in her 2018 MPavilion commission here in Melbourne. She speaks to our editor Jana Perković about how buildings express their structure and architecture as an act of humanity.

Eyes

Real Estate Boom House

Some years during the Spanish real estate boom, which began in the mid-1980s and ended abruptly in 2008, more than 500,000 houses were being constructed annually all over Spain. In the aftermath of the Global Financial Crisis, a photography and design project by Lluís Alexandre Casanovas Blanco, architect, curator and scholar at Princeton University, examines what is left.

Assemblage

Jack Self: Scepticism & Imagination

It is late 2018, and we're so embedded in a system of global capitalism that at times it seems inevitable. But like any human construct, it is not. Jack Self is an architect, editor and the director of the Real Foundation, a cultural institute that explores alternative models of housing ownership and design of project finance. His mission? To end capitalism.

Blueprint City

The Great Disruption: Proptech & ‘Generation Rent’

Move over, Airbnb: here comes 'proptech'. The new generation of apps goes beyond the dubiously-named 'sharing economy' to affect real estate in far more complex ways, from virtual bond deposits to micro-investing. Alexis Kalagas reports from London, where proptech is booming - together with the property market.

Blueprint City

Saskia Sassen: The Limits of the Material

Prof Saskia Sassen spent her career researching the processes underpinning globalisation. Her early work described the rise of the new class of high-paid consultants, concentrating in a few 'global cities' and displacing ordinary families. Lately, she has turned her attention to the global housing boom. How have buildings become a speculative asset class? In conversation with Jana Perković, she explains what has happened since the Global Financial Crisis.

Perspectives

Robin Hood Gardens

One of the more controversial displays at the 2018 Venice Biennale of Architecture was V&A Museum's decision to display a salvaged piece of the facade of the Robin Hood Gardens estate, rescued from demolition that started earlier in the year. UK-based architecture writer Owen Hatherley recounts the history of the building and the battle for its preservation. Is there a better way to engage with the historical legacy of public housing?

This Vertical Life

Unfolding Pavilion

Many people don't know that there is social housing throughout Venice: in the 1970s, the city embarked on an ambitious process of commissioning architecturally significant public housing projects that artfully blend into the city's medieval urban fabric. Possibly the best of them is Gino Valle's project in Giudecca, which featured in Unfolding Pavilion at the 2018 Venice Biennale of Architecture. Jana Perković spoke to the curators about why social housing still matters.