building assemblies from the top level project directory

[EJ Ciramella]

If I have a structure like this:
 
C:\work\projectname
 
And have three modules:
 
C:\work\projectname\utils
C:\work\projectname\someproj
C:\work\projectname\application
 
The only item that has an assembly is the actual application.  Is there
some way to build that assembly from the projectname directory, or do I
have to run assembly:assembly from the application directory every time?