Scale is inherent to the experience, practice and communication of architecture, as both an objective tool and a subjective judgement. Simultaneously, a consideration of scale in architecture might also focus on its own ambition; the potential scale of architecture, as a discipline, within the wider world.
From the starting point of two recently published books, the directors of MOS, Michael Meredith and Hilary Sample, will critically address both of these definitions today. Hilary Sample’s ‘Tending’ presents a proposal for how we might conceive of a more appropriate practise of architecture, at a scale extended over the lifespan of a building and centred on the potentially creative act of care, as ‘a new performance together’. Simultaneously, Michael Meredith’s ‘Smaller Architecture’ frames a loosely polemical critique of the ‘larger architecture’ of the recent neoliberal past through a proposal for ‘smaller architecture’, a more culturally significant scale of practice that retains an architectural ambition.
In a public discussion with Laura Harty of the Edinburgh School of Architecture and Landscape Architecture, Michael Meredith and Hilary Sample of MOS architects will consider these questions. What is an appropriate scale for architecture today?