Assemble win the Turner Prize 2015
Date uploaded: December 9, 2015
London collective Assemble has become the first architecture or design studio to receive the prestigious Turner Prize for art. The team of 18 young architects and designers, won one of the UK's most important art awards for its work on the Granby Four Streets project in Liverpool.
The project is a collaboration with the residents of a rundown council housing estate to clean up the neighbourhood, paint empty houses and establish a local market.
The architects beat a trio of females artists – Bonnie Camplin, Janice Kerbel and Nicole Wermers – for the £25,000 prize, which is awarded annually by Tate gallery to a British artist or group under the age of 50.
As well as being the first "non-artists" to receive the Turner Prize, this is first time a "collective" has won in its 31-year history.
The announcement was made at a ceremony at the Tramway arts venue in Glasgow, which is hosting an exhibition of the shortlisted projects until the 17th of January 2016.
Granby Four Streets involves the renovation of 10 houses and a series of empty shops, planting and creating social outdoor spaces, and offering building jobs and training to local people. Also as part of the project, Assemble created a workshop selling homeware made in collaboration with local artists and craftspeople.
Assemble was founded in 2010, when the team built a temporary cinema in an abandoned petrol station in London's Clerkenwell. The recent graduates cemented their reputation a year later with another temporary screening space, this time beside a canal under a motorway flyover.
They are currently working on a new gallery for London art college Goldsmiths in a converted bathhouse.
For more information about the collective click here.
