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The Building Centre launches ‘Small Scale Big Ideas’ a month-long exhibition
What architecture can achieve when scale is a discipline, not a constraint.
The Building Centre is pleased to announce Small Scale Big Ideas, a major exhibition and public programme running throughout May 2026 at its home on Store Street, London. Bringing together architects, engineers, makers and thinkers from across the UK and beyond, the event makes a sustained and timely argument: that the most consequential architectural ideas are often found not in the grandest commissions, but in the smallest, most carefully considered ones.
About the Exhibition
Small Scale Big Ideas presents work from a curated group of practices whose projects — compact homes, retrofitted terraces, live-work units, self-built structures — demonstrate that architectural intelligence is not a function of budget or footprint. The exhibition explores themes of density, material innovation, community, sustainability and the relationship between making and dwelling, through built work, models, drawings and installations.
Small Scale Big Ideas is presented by the Building Centre. Participating practices include Gomes + Staub Architects, Harrison Stringfellow Architects, Kashdan Brown Architects, Resonant Architecture, Rodić Davidson Architects, Russian For Fish, Studio Bark, U-Build, and Webb Yates Engineers.
Talks Programme
Throughout May, a series of talks, panels and conversations will bring the themes of the exhibition to life through the voices of the practitioners behind the work. Speakers include architects, structural engineers, material specialists and developers — each working at a scale where every decision is visible and every idea is tested against reality.
The programme addresses some of the most pressing questions in architecture and construction today: how do we densify existing suburbs without destroying what makes them liveable? What does genuinely sustainable construction look like in practice — in materials, in methods, in who does the building? How can small-scale development sustain creative communities and resist displacement? And what happens when architects take greater agency over the full arc of a project, from site identification to construction?
Topics span housing density and suburban transformation, the case for natural and traditional building materials, community-led retrofit and regeneration, live-work and the future of creative urban neighbourhoods, self-build and the circular economy, and the role of structural engineering in shaping environmental performance. Talks will be given by the exhibiting practices alongside invited guests, including Pierre d’Avoine, whose lecture marking the 50th anniversary of the Wates House — designed by Peter Bond at the Centre for Alternative Technology in mid-Wales, and widely regarded as the most environmentally significant house ever built in the UK — opens the programme on Wednesday 6 May. Further talks will be announced in the coming weeks.
Small Scale Big Ideas runs throughout May 2026 at the Building Centre, 26 Store Street, London WC1E 7BT.
The opening lecture by Pierre d’Avoine takes place on Wednesday 6 May 2026. The Building Centre is the UK’s leading built environment resource, located in the heart of London’s knowledge quarter. It provides an independent and authoritative venue for exhibitions, debate and product information across architecture, engineering and construction. Full schedule, ticketing and further speaker announcements will be made at buildingcentre and on the Building Centre’s social media channels.
Andrew Stanton Executive Editor – moving property and proptech forward. PropTech-X
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