The Making Room

Assemble were designers in residence at the V&A Dundee between 2019-2021. During the residency, they developed a project with a group of young people in the city to document details and fragments from an eclectic selection of buildings, from important civic institutions to frequented and familiar places that had strong associations for members of the group.

'Making Room' was one exploration of different fabrication tools and techniques. Accessible and contemporary digital tools, such as photogrammetry and DIY CnC milling equipment were combined with plaster casting, a traditional method used in the manufacture building details to produce scans and moulds from which copies of architectural details were fabricated.

The making of the cast metal signage by Kellenberger White.

The project set out to make a special new public interior within the Dundee Central Library, recalling the richly detailed spaces of civic buildings from the city’s heyday and mirroring the journey of one of the Museum’s centrepiece exhibits, a former tea room interior designed by Charles Rennie Macintosh that was dismantled in its original location and is now installed within the Museum.

In collaboration with artist fabricators Calum Stirling and Bea Loft-Schulz over 140 panels were cast during the residency at the V&A. Digital fabrication and cast production processes happened on site and were visible to gallery visitors, enabling an audience to gain an understanding of traditional and contemporary manufacturing processes that are fundamental to shaping the character and quality of the built environment, but which are typically unseen.