A Long Lunch with NATØ, muf and Assemble – What Does it Mean to Say Something Was Designed Collaboratively?

Join us for a fascinating discussion over a shared buffet lunch with three leading design collaboratives: NATØ, muf and Assemble, chaired by critic and designer Phineas Harper. Selected for their unique approaches to collaboration, our guests will discuss their practices and encourage you to join in with the debates that unfold. This event has been programmed to coincide with our current exhibition, ‘Josephsohn / Märkli. A Conjunction’, which examines the intense and longstanding collaboration between long-time friends Josephsohn and Peter Märkli. Curated by Niall Hobhouse, the exhibition explores what two very different disciplines – sculpture and architecture – can offer the other as insight, and about the generosity and humanity of such an exchange. It is this theme that will be our catalyst for ideas and discussions at this event. Tickets are £6 each. The event takes place in the Implement Shed (our education room) and includes a light buffet lunch. Phineas Harper Phineas Harper is a critic and designer based in London. He is Deputy Director of the think tank, the Architecture Foundation, a regular columnist for Dezeen and former Deputy Editor of the Architectural Review. NATØ NATØ (Narrative Architecture Today) emerged from the Architectural Association in 1983 – continuing the lineage of radicalism fostered by the school – and were Catrina Beevor, Martin Benson, Nigel Coates, Peter Fleissig, Robert Mull, Christina Norton, Mark Prizeman, Melanie Sainsbury and Carlos Villanueva Brandt. Initially conceived around the production of a magazine, NATØ went on to produce several exhibitions together, alongside three issues of NATØ, disbanding in 1987 following a major installation at the Boston ICA. Drawing on the complexity and vitality of urban life in 1980s London, NATØ envisioned a city made by its inhabitants, without the top-down imposition of design by professionals. muf Liza Fior is one of the founding partners of muf architecture/art. According to Fior ‘They know that collaboration is hard but worth it. They work exclusively in the public realm even if that requires pushing briefs, building envelope, definition of scope to make it so. Every project comes with unsolicited research to give greater accuracy to the proposals whether master plans to temporary interventions via landscapes and buildings – a continual dialogue between detail and strategy.’ (see www.muf.co.uk & www.morethanonefragile.co.uk) ‘muf work mainly in East London but not exclusively so, muf are the only UK winners of the European Prize for Public Space (for Barking Town Square) and were the authors of the British Pavilion at the Venice Biennale in 2010, where they continue to collaborate with We Are Here Venice.’ Assemble 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, whilst retaining a democratic and co-operative working method that enables built, social and research-based work at a variety of scales. Based on a constantly evolving social contract, the collaborations at the heart of Assemble’s practice are multiple and expressed through everything they do from raising timber frames through to making lunch. Image: NATØ, 1985. Photographed by Sheila Rock. L to R: Peter Fleissig, Melanie Sainsbury, Catrina Beevor, Mark Prizeman, Christina Norton, Carlos Villanueva, Martin Benson, Robert Mull, Nigel Coates