Architectural Association

Tutors of Unit 4, Assemblages Summer School 2025

Collaboration with Jake Parkin

Brief: Assemblage is not just a method of construction. It is a way of seeing, of thinking, and of telling stories through fragments. In this three-week summer school, Unit 4 explores the city as a field of irregularities, misfits and exceptions. We are not searching for perfect objects but for moments where architecture breaks down, adapts or accumulates. We begin with what already exists. The leftover, the awkward, the ignored. From this, we build something new. Through digital scanning, manipulation, fabrication and narrative construction, students will produce individual and collective works that recombine fragments into provocative and unexpected spatial propositions. Rather than designing from scratch, we ask how existing urban elements can be transformed by shifting scale, material, setting or use. The unit culminates in a collective installation that operates as a shared architectural fiction composed of many parts. Along the way, students will develop technical skills in 3D scanning and fabrication while also engaging with broader questions around authorship, storytelling and the politics of spatial reuse. This unit is for students who are excited by experimentation, who are comfortable working with ambiguity, and who want to produce work that combines tectonic invention with cultural critique.