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This project explores the spatial qualities of assemblage on three scales: the construction unit (or the assemblage of construction units), the spatial unit (or the assemblage of spaces) and the compound unit (or the re-assembly of both construction units and spaces). The three scales when linked together in time create a process of formal involution, a process which moves from discrete spatial unit to the juxtaposition of these units in the site, to the indefinite multiplication of their boundaries and ultimately the formulation of a new and compound spatiality. This process, as an ongoing chain can have new units assembled into it at any time, each of which will in turn come apart and serve to enrich the site and its spaces with further formal material.

The exploration of assembly is an attempt to recreate within a rapid and contemporary formal process the manner in which the millennial Palimpsests of our older cities and cathedrals carry the marks of every stage of their history. Spaces layered with their own histories are rarely produced today as buildings and urban areas are rapidly replaced in their entirety by an economy that demands continuous change. Using the contemporary pace of urban change as a positive generator, the project sets up its process of assemblage as a way in which rapid change can not only occur, but be used to build up a formal continuity and architectural richness.

The Catholic Church as an institution exemplified the millennial continuity of cities through its timeless liturgies and layered cathedrals, but never quite discovered a way to mark itself in the post-industrial landscape. The project occurs within a fictive context which is initiated through and propelled by the desire of the Church to come to terms with its inability to engage contemporary society. The Church in principle requires continuity, but in practice seeks novelty and the narrative follows it’s haphazard journey towards discovering, through the architectural practice of assembly