Spaces to assemble: Explorations for our new paper
This week, James MacDonald-Nelson and Gustav Kjær Vad Nielsen offer us updates from conversations with architects, artists, and democracy practitioners
After launching their paper “Spaces for Deliberation: Eight spatial qualities for designing deliberative assemblies” in April, DemNext Cities Programme Lead James MacDonald-Nelson and Fellow Gustav Kjær Vad Nielsen have continued exploring this topic.
They’re writing a second paper about designing spaces for deliberation by learning from examples of inclusive, regenerative civic spaces — out this autumn!
Where to, from here? Research-based artistic inquiries on contemporary democracy
In June, Gustav was invited by our friends at Design & Democracy, Amelie Klein and Vera Sacchetti, to speak about the first paper at Circolo del Design, a cultural production centre in Turin, Italy. Gustav attended the opening of a new exhibition called Where to, from here? curated by Vera.
Gustav reflects on the experience:
“'Where to, from here?', presented a series of research-based artistic inquiries on contemporary democracy and its possible futures. In a session called ‘Forms of Assembly’, I had the chance to present our recent work on spaces for deliberation and discuss democratic spaces and their design with Vera and the architects and artists Lara Lesmes and Fredrik Hellberg who run Space Popular.
In the exhibition, Frederik and Lara installed their long-term research project called Filandón – a space designed for democratic dialogue across physical and digital spaces. It consists of carpets and pillows scattered around centrally placed digital screens with VR headsets. Seated on the soft floor, you put on the headset and enter a hybrid space with personalised avatars appearing over a live 360 degree transmission of your physical location. The physical and digital spaces become layered and enable an extended assembly space that is physically situated and digitally connected.
Thinking about the design of spaces for deliberation across physical and digital spaces is something we will address in a future paper and Filandón offers a valuable experimental format to learn from.”
Assembly: An ‘open parliament’ on the streets of London
Over the summer, James met with architects and curators who have been exploring 'assembly' and alternative visions to our civic infrastructure through various design and installation projects.
James spoke with architects Era Savvides and Nasios Varnavas, principals of Urban Radicals, who designed the 2024 public installation Assembly for the 20th anniversary of the London Festival of Architecture. They explained that their intention was to create spaces designed to facilitate interactions - from daily conversations over lunch, to organised forums for public discussion and performance. This was guided by a central question:
'What if civic buildings in London transformed from enclosed institutional structures into a horizontal system integrated into the very fabric of our streets? What type of democracy would this represent?'
Savvides and Varnavas explored this through four distinct public assembly platforms across the City of London's Square Mile, creating a kind of 'open parliament' accessible to a diverse audience. Throughout the festival, the platforms were activated with activities like open drawing sessions, and a public lecture with Samantha Hardingham, where a couple of members of parliament joined in the discussion.
This project explores how we could reimagine the spatial qualities for democratic processes by opening these spaces to our streets. It questions the formality we associate with decision-making spaces and asks us to think more broadly about political discourse and everyday citizen deliberation through a spatial lens.
After the festival, three of the installations have found permanent homes across various community spaces in London, including RUSS and Cody Dock.
What does it mean ‘to assemble’? Views from the Irish Pavilion at this year’s Venice Biennale
In August, James visited the 2025 Venice Architecture Biennale. Curated by Carlo Ratti, this year the biennale is called 'Intelligens - Natural. Artificial. Collective.', and asks visitors to consider architecture's role in a time when we must adapt to climate change and the myriad social and political shifts of today.
James visited Ireland's national pavilion designed by Cotter & Naessens Architects, in collaboration with multidisciplinary artist Michelle Delea, curator Luke Naessens, sound artist David Stalling, and Alan Meredith responsible for constructing the installation.
Conceived as a physical interpretation of the concept 'to assemble' in both senses - to gather as a group of people with a common interest, and to construct a whole from constituent parts - the installation reflects on both the spatial qualities of assembling and the processes that make it happen.
In Naessens’ words:
"the project insists that assembly is both a product and process of making. The citizens' assembly, for example, is the result of procedural choreography and bureaucratic craftsmanship. It requires attending to the circulation of information, the placement of bodies in space, and even sensory qualities like sound. It requires design."
The installation combines works produced by architects, craftspeople, musicians, and writers. According to the architects, creating the installation was a recursive process rather than top down. Each contributor worked on their respective parts and then came together at regular intervals with the whole team - almost a form of deliberation and consensus-building, similar to the process in a citizens' assembly.
The space is round, with one opening to access the interior and open to the sky, creating a beautiful acoustic experience. Wood creates a feeling of warmth and tranquillity, and the proportions help you imagine hosting small group discussions. A central handwoven, circular carpet adds to the feeling of intimacy and comfort.
These conversations and visits over the summer have been extremely insightful as Gustav and James continue working on their next research piece.
Stay tuned for the next DemNext paper on spaces for deliberation coming out this autumn!
🐝 Upcoming events
15 September, London, UK
DemNext International Advisory Council Member, Jon Alexander hosts DemNext CEO Claudia Chwalisz and Legislative Theatre practitioner Katy Rubin at The Conduit to explore modes of democracy that seek to involve and work with people, not deliver for them. If you’re not a Conduit member, you can still register here. If you’re not able to make it in person, bookmark this livestream YouTube link here.
23 September, Mannheim, Germany
James and Gustav will run a workshop "Co-curating Democracy: Cultural Institutions and the Future Spaces of Citizens’ Assemblies”, at the ‘Culture in the +2 degree society Climate resilience of cultural institutions’ conference.
26 September, Berlin, Germany
James will moderate a panel at Berlin’s AEDES Architecture Forum as they kick off a year-long programme, including presentations by Katarina Bramsen Buhl from C.F. Møller’s Democratic Design Department in Copenhagen, Aurelija Matulevičiūtė-Goldschmidt, Senior Urban Practitioner at TSPA Planners and Consultants in Berlin, Roeland Dudal, Director of Architecture Workroom in Brussels, and Oliver Seidel, Co-Founder of Cityförster in Hanover.
📡 On our radar
📢 As the Dutch coalition government collapses for the second time in three months, calls grow for citizens’ assemblies to bypass dysfunctional parliamentary politics.
📖 Manon Revel and Théophile Pénigaud explore how statistical methods for modelling and inferring the “collective will” differ from philosophical accounts of how it forms through representation and deliberation. In this new paper, they then explore the concept of AI Reflectors — a process serving as a self-discovery tool for collective sense-making.
🚇 Riz Ahmed talking about democracy reform… on the New York subway. In a short, funny exchange with comedian Kareem Rahma, Ahmed makes the case for replacing elections with a lottery of everyday people.
🌏 Wellington City Council evaluates its first citizens' assembly, finding strong recruitment success but identifying gaps in integrating Treaty of Waitangi considerations into the deliberative process.
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