All Buildings Great & Small: New Building Designs for a Better City

All Buildings Great & Small is an exhibit of new building designs for a better city. Exhibited works include drawings and models of new building prototypes for Coral Gables and Wynwood, and of the existing buildings that inspired them. In contrast to the prevailing landscape of large towers and suburban subdivisions, these works examine how to contemporize the building types that made up Dade County’s early urban areas: small and adaptable.

The works are selected from seven semester-long studios taught earlier this year at FIU’s Department of Architecture to more than 100 students, under the direction of department chair Jason Chandler in collaboration with Townhouse Center and supported by Knight Foundation. Each student documented an existing building in Coral Gables or Wynwood, and designed a small, adaptable prototype.

The course and exhibit are part of a broader initiative in Miami-Dade County and nationwide to promote fine-grain urbanism, a pattern of development that produces neighborhoods that are more vibrant and equitable. Groups such as the National Trust for Historic Preservation’s Green Lab, the Urban Land Institute’s Small Scale Developers Forum, and Project for Lean Urbanism suggest that a great building is one that is small.