Small is human - Comment - Critical Essay

Architectural Review, The, Sept, 2002 by Catherine Slessor

From English garden follies to present-day Tokyo, the virtues of smallness--convenience, humanity and manageability--add to the pleasure of daily life and also have instructive lesson for architects

In their 1977 film Powers of Ten (1) Charles and Ray Eames set out to explore the universe both at macro and microcosmic scale. By decreasing and then enlarging magnification repeatedly by a power of tea, the nature and structure of the cosmos slowly unfolds, from infinite galaxies to the microstructure of a carbon atom in the human body. What is particularly enthralling is that the microscopic world, the world of smallness, is also revealed as a beautiful, mysterious and unknown universe and that all existence depends on infinitesimally small numbers and sequences of minute particles.

Small may be beautiful, but our modern epoch is in inextricable thrall to the lure and power of bigness big money, bog business, the big idea, big personalities, the big stage, big buildings. Size has never mattered more and there is a direct and depressing correlation between bigness and crassness (especially in architecture), despite being given a spurious legitimacy by taste gurus such as Rem Koolhaas (the S part of by SMLXL is the section you sense the was least excited about). Apparently it's now OK to be big and bad, because the human predisposition for bigness (and badness) is instinctive, sweeping all before it in an irresistible tide of greed and hubris enjoy the ride. Even architects get carried away: all the big stars have big offices, big staff and big ambitions. Glenn Murcutt (recently awarded the big Pritzker Prize) is one of the very few famous names to run a genuinely small practice with clients apparently willing to wait years for a house, but to his bigger and more corporately organized cont emporaries in Europe and America this approach seem at best perplexing and at worst deranged.

Smallness tends to be seen as too self-limiting, eccentric, particular and fiddly. Yet these are also qualities that make architecture physically as well as psychologically accessible. As Phyllis Richardson notes: 'Most obviously, the miniaturization of architecture reduces it to a human scale with which we can more readily interact. We are also drawn by the intricacy of conception and detail by the fact that smaller buildings usually possess a more tactile quality than constructions of larger scale. (2) Our experience of our surroundings is shaped and tempered by small things a door handle, bench, bus shelter, fountain, gazebo, garden shed, telephone kiosk apparently unimportant details, but if thoughtfully designed they add to the dignity and pleasure of daily life.

'Today we suffer from an almost universal idolatry of giantism,' E. F. Schumacher wrote in his classic text on Western attitudes to economics almost 20 years ago. 'It is therefore necessary to insist on the virtues of smallness where this applies.' (3) Schumacher was not opposed to bigness pre se, but felt that there was an appropriate scale for every activity and that the 'convenience, humanity and manageability of smallness; (4) was preferable to the megalithic urge. Highlighting the absurdity of GDP-fixated human societies pinning their hopes on exponential economic growth while ignoring the social and environmental 'externalities' of consumerism, Schumacher expounded the virtues of smaller working units, communal ownership and regional workplaces that used local labour and resources. Such ideas are still relevant and touch on the essential dynamics of human cooperation and exchange, small transactions that form the basis of all economic and social relationships.

An example of Schumacher's theories in practice might be the Grameen Bank housing programme in Bangladesh (AR November 1980), one of the most poverty-stricken places on the planet and regularly assailed by catastrophic floods which wash away fragile dwellings. The Bank encourages families to set up small enterprises and lends money at very cheap rates so that a family can afford to buy four precast concrete columns. These are made in local factories, but are designed to be carried on a rickshaw. The columns form the corners of the house and provide a structure that can withstand the floods. Walls are made by the owners weaving together local reeds and leaves, which can easily be replaced if swept away. This programme incorporates many of the virtues of smallness. The houses respond to human need and ecological imperative they use technology appropriately and they provide personal space that is elaborated on by the occupants with their own craft skills.

Another virtue of smallness is its potential for experimentation and improvisation. Small buildings often blaze trails for more ambitious programmes (the history of modern architecture can be traced through the single family house) or mark a watershed at the opening of a new era or style. For instance, the little Doric temple of Theseus at Hagley in Worcestershire, built by James Stuart in 1758, was the first building of the Greek Revival. Historically, the vogue for English garden follies was huge and encompassed a bewildering diversity of architectural fashions from Baroque to Egyptian. Aristocratic landowners otherwise wary of ostentation felt free to experiment on smaller buildings in their gardens and estates, generating an extraordinary range of temples, grottoes, summerhouses, sham castles, pagodas, mausolca, obelisks, pyramids and other idiosyncrasies. As their purpose was to surprise and delight, unadulterated eccentricity could be given free rein. The modern follies of this year's Swiss Expo (P44) s uch as Diller & Scofidio's building-as-cloud and Jean Nouvel's heroic rusting Monolith extend this tradition of whimsical yet engrossing experimentation.