  Building structures with hierarchical order through the self-assembly of
smaller blocks is not only a prerogative of nature, but also a strategy to
design artificial materials with tailored functions. We explore in simulation
the spontaneous assembly of colloidal particles into extended structures, using
spheres and size-asymmetric dimers as solute particles, while treating the
solvent implicitly. Besides rigid cores for all particles, we assume an
effective short-range attraction between spheres and small monomers to promote,
through elementary rules, dimer-mediated aggregation of spheres. Starting from
a completely disordered configuration, we follow the evolution of the system at
low temperature and density, as a function of the relative concentration of the
two species. When spheres and large monomers are of same size, we observe the
onset of elongated aggregates of spheres, either disconnected or cross-linked,
and a crystalline bilayer. As spheres grow bigger, the self-assembling scenario
changes, getting richer overall, with the addition of flexible membrane sheets
with crystalline order and monolayer vesicles. With this wide assortment of
structures, our model can serve as a viable template to achieve a better
control of self-assembly in dilute suspensions of microsized particles.
