Good Things, Small Packages

Annie Block, Mark McMenamin, and Meghan Edwards -- Interior Design, 5/1/2010 12:00:00 AM

It's the perennial question with architecture exhibitions: How can two-dimensional materials, even 3-D models, convey the experience of walking through an actual building? London's Victoria and Albert Museum replies with "1:1 Architects Build Small Spaces," for which 19 international firms were invited to dream up structures big enough, in many cases, to climb but small enough, regardless, to fit in the V&A's galleries and garden. Seven of the proposals have been constructed for display June 15 to August 30. "They offer thought-provoking notions of work, study, and play," design curator Abraham Thomas says. And, yes, there will be drawings, renderings, and models, too.

From left: This computer rendering shows Helen & Hard's ash-wood climbing structure for a garden at the Victoria and Albert Museum, London. An acrylic model of Terunobu Fujimori's wooden structure for the new medieval and Renaissance galleries.