11th August 2016

London Design Festival: Granby Workshop at Clerkenwell London

Turner Prize-winners Assemble will exhibit at Clerkenwell London for the duration of the London Design Festival as part of Design Undefined. To say that team Zetteler are excited about this would be an understatement. Perfectly embodying the convention-rejecting, innovation-embracing mantra of Design Undefined, globally recognised architecture collective Assemble is taking this opportunity to showcase its work as Granby Workshop, alongside the likes of Camille Walala, Yinka Ilori, Samuel Wilkinson, Adam Blencowe and Marine Duroselle.

A by-product of the ongoing community restoration of Liverpool’s derelict Granby Street neighbourhood that won Assemble the coveted Turner Prize late last year, Granby Workshop hand-produces interior products using experimental making processes that incorporate chance and improvisation. For Design Undefined, Granby Workshop will showcase products, including mantlepieces, bookends, planters, lamps and tabletops, made from cast demolition waste (aka ‘Granby Rock’) on the ground-floor Platform and windows of Clerkenwell London.

Adding to the brilliance of the crucial restoration project, profits from Granby Workshop are fed back into Assemble’s work, allowing them and the Granby community to continue improving the long-abandoned area. Film footage from the Granby restoration will be shown downstairs in Clerkenwell London’s Wine Keep.

Granby Workshop took some time out to answer a few of our questions ahead of Design Undefined.

Where did the idea for Granby Workshop come from?

We were interested in exploring ideas around enterprise as a potential additional output of regeneration – creating alternative applications for the large capital investment it requires. We wanted to create a business that could support the culture of hands-on creativity and direct action that has been so transformative for the Granby Four Streets.

How do you decide what products to create? Is there a single designer? Or is it more collaborative?

Our first range of products was a set of handmade features, designed for refurbished homes in Granby to replace elements that were stripped out of the houses as they were boarded up by the council. Mantelpieces cast using brick and rubble construction waste, ceramic door handles smoke-fired in sawdust filled barbeques and tiles decorated with colourful, hand-cut decals have already been installed in the CLT [Community Land Trust] houses. These designs formed the basis of our first edition of purchasable products, alongside new objects developed by the Workshop team and in collaboration with invited designers.

What have been your most popular pieces?

The cut-out tiles and sawdust ceramic handles.

You make use of some pretty interesting processes to create your products – sawdust smoking, casting demolition waste, etc – how did you come to adopt these?

By experimenting and exploring different interests across the collective. The casting process was developed with the designer Will Shannon though a project called ‘Homework’.

How many people are involved?

16 people have been employed in the workshop over the last six months making products. A wider network of residents, professionals working with the CLT and craftspeople support the project in a more informal capacity.

What excites you about exhibiting at Clerkenwell London?

It’s a great platform for the workshop to introduce our products to a design audience in London.

Is there a particular impression or idea you want visitors to leave with?

That business and the production can be designed both in terms of their physical aspects and material output, but also in how they are organised, the culture they support and the kind of activities they provide for.

The first collection is showing at Design Undefined – what’s coming up next? Are you developing new products?

We will be taking part in exhibitions around the world and launching new ranges as products develop through projects based in Granby. In the short and medium term, the Workshop will produce only ceramic products. These were generally the most popular products sold from the pilot, and they require processes appropriate to the limited space we have available. This gives us the opportunity to build a product collection around a more focused range of skills and facilities.

What else are you looking forward to at LDF this year?

Seeing what Will Shannon has been up to for Martino Gamper’s No Ordinary Love.

Find Granby Workshop at Clerkenwell London, as part of Design Undefined, 17, 19-24 September.

Download the full Design Undefined press release here.