Architecture is intrinsically part of our everyday experience. Yet architecture exhibitions, with their emphasis on drawings, models and photographs, sometimes deny their audience an engagement with actual buildings.

Using the landscape of the Museum as a test site, the V&A invited nineteen architects to submit proposals for structures that examine notions of refuge and retreat. From these nineteen concept submissions, seven were selected for construction at full-scale.

Small spaces such as these can push the boundaries and possibilities of creative practice. A shift in scale towards smaller, bespoke structures encourages a heightened sensitivity to materials, texture and proportion. A renewed clarity emerges, allowing architects a freedom of expression that often struggles to survive in larger building projects