Large buildings receive most of the attention. But there is a case to be made that the most interesting work in contemporary architecture is happening at the small scale.
Architecture magazines are, by and large, interested in big buildings. Museums. Opera houses. Airports. The logic is understandable: large buildings have large budgets, and large budgets attract famous architects, and famous architects make for interesting profiles.
But I want to make a case for the small building. Not as a consolation prize — ‘this is what you get when you can’t afford a stadium’ — but as a distinct category of endeavor with its own challenges, pleasures, and arguments.
Small buildings are honest in a way that large buildings rarely get to be. At the scale of a house or a small pavilion, there is nowhere to hide. Every decision is visible. The junction between the wall and the floor, the size of the door handle, the depth of the window reveal — all of these are perceptible at human scale in a way that they are not in a building measured in acres.
There is also a question of making. Large buildings are assembled from components specified by consultants and manufactured by industrial processes the architect never sees. A small building can be made. The architect can be present at its making, can adjust, can respond. Some of the most interesting contemporary architecture is being made by people who have deliberately chosen to work at a scale where this kind of engagement is possible.
I think of the Steel Chapel I designed for Homestead: 1,900 square feet, conceived around reclaimed steel and a single oculus. Every piece of material had a story. The building knows it.
Emma Nilson
Architect, Pittsburgh