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    Small public: Relativities

    Jun 29, 2020 7 minutes
    Words by Kerstin Thompson

    Small is not necessarily insignificant. To contend this requires us to uncouple scale from impact.

    Through our practice, Kerstin Thompson Architects (KTA), we’ve identified two key ways in which the design and delivery of the small public project can make an impact on the public realm that is incommensurate with the scale of the resources used. The first is through the judicious re-use of existing buildings, and the second is through repeated types of modest civic buildings that offer a testing ground for typological invention and that are, in their composite value, greater than the one-off.

    An economy of means

    What constitutes “architecture?” Must it be evident in order to have an impact? Members of French architecture practice Lacaton and Vassal described how, having examined a square in Bordeaux (Place Léon Aucoc, France, 1996) they had been asked to “embellish,” they decided to do nothing. They found it to be beautiful already and that there was nothing to be solved through physical change. Rather, they advocated for better maintenance and care.

    The architect who opts to do nothing, or at least to minimize

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