V&A Dundee has announced it is working with architecture collective Assemble, the museum’s new designers in residence, on a project inspired by historic buildings in the city.
This summer, Assemble, V&A Dundee and Dundee’s Central Library will be working with local people and, through a series of workshops, will produce a new interior room inspired by local architecture. This will take shape within the galleries, before being moved to the Central Library later this year where it will function as an area for digital learning and making for the city.
From today in the residency studio at V&A Dundee, Assemble will present samples, tests and experiments from a range of previous projects. Young people will work with digital scanning and modelling, traditional and contemporary production techniques and serial fabrication. V&A added that digital tools will record architectural details from local buildings to create replicas, fabricate moulds and produce cast panels that will be arranged to form a new interior for Dundee.
James Binning from Assemble said, “It is becoming increasingly challenging to understand how things are made, from the everyday products we use to the buildings we inhabit. The role of craft has changed from a means of cultural communication towards an exclusive kind of luxury that is disconnected from civic society and the world around us.
“Our residency with V&A Dundee, and the construction of a new room for Dundee’s Central Library, will reconnect with this belief in the capacity of design and contemporary craft to invest meaning, knowledge and skills in a public space in the centre of the city. Our vision is to enable a new generation to become skilled producers inspired by the past, not simply consumers of design.”
As part of the residency, Assemble is looking for people aged 16-25 who would like to take part in this project. No experience of digital design or physical making is required. Anyone interested in taking part should contact info@vandadundee.org
