Meet the activist architects: why young designers in London are going back to basics

So while the 2008 financial crisis has been a disagreeable hiccup for tower-building, corporate architects who just took the intervening time to dream up taller versions, it has been something of a blessing for a generation of younger London architects. It is a generation that has, in any case, begun to kick back at the bubble-shaped (and often bubble-headed) digital creations of their globalising predecessors.

The profession has been increasingly dividing into huge and slick international firms and sole practitioners with the creative middle squeezed out.

Alongside guerrilla knitters, DIY clothing customisers and vinyl record enthusiasts, London practices such as Architecture 00, Carl Turner Architects, vPPR, Assemble, Studio Weave and We Made That the clue is sometimes in the name are, to varying degrees, emphasising the process and involvement of the users of their designs, the crafted, the improvised and the down to earth.

In some ways it mirrors the counter-cultural explosion of the Sixties, in the face of the Space Age. With its lo-fi solutions, whimsical ideas and co-operative values, it is a riposte to the direction that architecture has taken in the past few decades.

What the latest generation of activist architects have in common is commitment to peoples needs rather than stroking their own egos by building a stylistic brand.

They are the heirs to studios such as Muf and the now-disbanded FAT, which refused to play the corporate game, and their choices have not so much been driven by a changed economy as a desire for a new vision. Necessity has not so much mothered as matched invention for three practices, in particular.

DIY diehards: the Assemble collective work from their self-built hall near Bow, created for 80,000 out of standard timber and concrete tiles made on site (Picture: Assemble)

Assemble is an architectural collective born out of collective frustration at the way standard architecture offices often work. Hierarchical with malignant presenteeism, leading to late nights but little creative input for younger designers.

The collective has a core of about 14 members, half of whom teach architecture part-time. Most are Cambridge graduates many had got sick of working in other practices.

They are stressful places and theres not enough discussion of architectural merits. Wed been taught to have more involvement than that, says one member.

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Meet the activist architects: why young designers in London are going back to basics