Stories | Assemble Papers

Blueprint City

Firminy: a Corbusian Commune

Among his last-conceived projects, Le Corbusier finally realised his vision for a new urban fabric in France. An old mining quarry became a platform for a modernist utopia of communal living. Writer Linsey Rendell visited the heritage-listed commune.

Assemblage

Mona: Skin in the Game

Mona has captured the hearts of many – financial freedom, combined with a willingness to take risks, has made this museum a genuinely experimental project, rejecting the unadventurous and embracing the new. Emma McRae delves into the museum’s history and how it has transformed the way Tasmanians, and Australians, view the island state. “When David […]

This Vertical Life

122 Roseneath St: Starting with Community – Part II

In the second part of our special article on a small footprint project with a big community, we visit two households that now call 122 Roseneath St home.

This Vertical Life

122 Roseneath St: Starting with Community – Part I

122 Roseneath St was completed in 2018 by Fieldwork Architects: the first building developed by Assemble, serving as a testing grounds for the company's ethos and philosophy. Introducing the first of our two-part special on the small footprint project close to our hearts, this week we visit one of the architects on the project, who now lives on this address.

Editorial

(Future) Legacies

100 years of Bauhaus; the 50th anniversary of Glenn Murcutt’s practice; School Strikes for Climate. It has been a year of major anniversaries and reckonings. AP editor Jana Perković reflects on our past and future legacies. It was impossible to walk out of the train station. The crowd was so thick that it created a […]

Blueprint City

Lived Solidarity: Housing Co-operatives

Housing co-operatives offer a way to pursue quality of life at an affordable price: even the United Nations considers them a necessary approach to address global housing challenges. But what is a housing co-operative? Manuel Lutz tells us how co-operatives came to exist in the German-speaking Europe, how they operate in contemporary world, and what lessons they can offer us.

Assemblage

Glenn Murcutt: Touching the Earth Lightly

Australia's only Pritzker Prize winner is also the award's most unlikely recipient: Glenn Murcutt AO prefers to work alone, and has never built a single structure outside Australia. This choice reflects his dedication to working with the nuances of the local climate and natural conditions. As Glenn's MPavilion opens in Melbourne's Botanical Gardens, AP editor Jana Perković sits down to chat with Australia's most environmentally conscious architect about past and future legacies.

Practical Matter

Play Matters: The Style and Substance of the Berlin Spielplatz

Germany has some of the world's most exciting playgrounds, thanks to a combination of social values and wise design regulations. On her sojourn in Berlin, planning lawyer Mitra Anderson-Oliver gets to explore (mit kind!) this essential infrastructure of childhood.

Environment

Catherine Mosbach: Temporal Landscapes

Catherine Mosbach’s career has followed an unconventional trajectory, her portfolio of work emphasising the imaginary and designed with future generations in mind. Earlier this year at the Living Cities Forum, architect and urban designer Elliet Spring sat down in conversation with the renowned landscape architect. Landscape architect Catherine Mosbach is jetlagged when we meet in […]

Environment

Expecting the Unexpected

As global warming causes our planet to heat up, weather disasters are becoming increasingly common. Jeff McAllister, a chemical engineer at Arup’s Research, Foresight and Innovation team, investigates how we can use technology to create a built environment capable of responding to outside forces.

Living not Decorating

Yandell and Lauren: Creating Community

Artist’s Yandell Walton and Lauren Dunn live in an art-filled warehouse in Collingwood with their two whippets, Sanchez and Desi. Emma McRae speaks with them about how Collingwood has changed over the years and how they managed to transform an empty warehouse space, into a plant-filled sanctuary for a community of artists.

Practical Matter

The Rooftop Energy Revolution

According to the United Nations, the global community has until 2030 to change its behaviour before we lock in a disastrous level of warming. This begs the question: why aren’t we using the vast amounts of renewable energy available to us? Ryan Alexander investigates the green energy movement in Australia and how households can effect change.

Ears

Ears #38: In-between Worlds mix by Jade McInally

Jade McInally, AKA Jade Imagine, brings us our Spring edition of EARS – a mixtape series in collaboration with Courtney Barnett and Jen Cloher’s Milk! Records. Originally hailing from the Sunshine Coast, Jade has been a significant contributor to the Australian indie scene for more than a decade, and writes music of quiet determination, blending synthwave, art […]

Perspectives

Disability Design: Who has access to the city?

Disability is not a personal problem, but a socio-political question: a question of who is included, and who is excluded from our cities. Writer, educator and activist Jax Jacki Brown unpacks the shortcomings in disability design as they traverse Melbourne in search of an accessible tram stop.

Blueprint City

Informal Settlements: Never Just a ‘Slum’

Ishita Chatterjee is an architect who researches informal settlements. We call them 'slums' and think we know them. But what are they, really? And, most importantly, what are the lessons we can learn from them? In these notes from her fieldwork in India, Ishita explains how an informal settlement is made.

Eyes

The Long Way Back: Europe

This summer, architect Vlad Doudakliev shipped his car to Vladivostok, from where he travelled overland across Russia with his dad, all the way to his native Bulgaria. In the second part of his travelogue for Assemble Papers, we follow Vlad as he crosses into Europe.

Assemblage

Lesley Lokko: Decolonising Architecture

Danielle Mileo caught up with Lesley after her lecture ‘What Pliny Said’ at the World Architecture Festival in Amsterdam late last year, to discuss the challenges around decolonisation and pedagogy in architectural education on the African continent.

Home Made

Japanese Spinach Rolls with dipping sauce

Celebrant, self-taught cook and Castlemaine superstar, Jenny O’Keefe, shares with assistant editor, Cat McGauran, her recipe for Japanese Spinach Rolls and dipping sauce. Both nutritious and delicious, these rolls are made with love and sure to impress!

Ears

Ears #37: Updating the Past mix by Evelyn Ida Morris

Evelyn Ida Morris, also known as Pikelet, is a musician who glides effortlessly between looping pop and structurally complex, experimental compositions. With a long career spanning four celebrated experimental pop albums as Pikelet, voted one of '50 Most Powerful People in the Australian Music Industry', a co-founder of LISTEN advocacy group for gender diversity and politics in Australian music, they are a legend of Australian independent music. Evelyn has prepared us a winter mix, which expands on the themes of their 2019 self-titled album: lush, post-classical compositions focusing on the piano, and dealing with the non-binary experience of gender.

Eyes

Shacks: Somewhere to Disappear

From desert landscapes to isolated places, from mountains to jungles, wilderness is somewhere to rest, find refuge; a place of solitude far away from society. Cristina Guerrero documents a series of discovered cabins and other hideouts found around the world.

Assemblage

Mary Featherston: The Slow Evolution of School

The design of our schools still reflects a belief in a hierarchical society: teachers up the front, students sitting passively. Designer Mary Featherston has been researching and developing learning environments for more than 40 years. She tells AP assistant editor Cat McGauran that young people deserve more from the education system.

Assemblage

Kirsha Kaechele: Transcending the Quagmire

Artist Kirsha Kaechele embraces complexity and contradiction that permeates attempts to do good in the world. Her art projects range from gun buyback programs to cleaning up rivers, and do not necessarily look like art to anyone but her. In her new project for Mona, she is proposing to solve the invasive species problem in Australia - by eating them.

Environment

The Outer and Inner Landscapes

For the last four years, photographer and dancer Gregory Lorenzutti has been living in Fawkner, a northern suburb of Melbourne that was cattle country right until the 1940s. In the postwar area, the suburb was subdivided for housing for returning servicemen, but most of the houses in the area were built in the period 1950-1970, as detached brick homes for Ford factory workers. After a heartbreak, Greg moved into one of the original Ford houses with a garden, and has given it a new life.

This Vertical Life

Six-pack Living: Type Street Apartment

The six-pack is the unsung hero of Australia’s vernacular architecture. Their sweep through the inner suburbs in the 1970s left a significant mark on the urban landscape. Though often reviled, we at Assemble Papers love them for their solid build and functional design. Jack Chen has carefully renovated a 33 sqm apartment in a modest walk-up block in Richmond, showing what a six-pack flat can do.