A Book on Making a Petite École

Michael Meredith, Hilary Sample, MOS

As part of the 2019 Biennale d’architecture et de paysage in Versailles, France, MOS constructed Petite École, a small, open-air pavilion to house educational workshops for children. It is a place for looking and making, and for making and looking, constructed with 688 aluminum pieces modeled, flattened, cut, folded, prefabricated, shipped, and then assembled onsite. It is made to be taken down and reassembled elsewhere. It is designed to be easily understood, made of simple building elements: a long, low roof with columns and stacked beams holding it up.
Undertaken during various design workshops, single page design exercises written by architects were assembled into a large book and given to children. A Book on Making a Petite École features an expanded collection of these exercises. Each exercise includes playful illustrations of its steps, starting a conversation about how designers look at, think about, teach, and imagine the foundations of design. Alongside these, the design process of the pavilion is included, as its own design exercise, from colorful illustrations of each step of the pavilion’s construction, to actual construction photographs and photographs of the completed pavilion being occupied. A Book on Making a Petite École considers basic questions of design pedagogy, abstraction, accessibility, experimentation, and equity, while considering and reconsidering architecture.

With Contributions of:
Djamel Klouche, Jean-Christophe Quinton, Sebastián Adamo & Marcelo Faiden, Yussef Agbo-Ola, Sir David Adjaye, Xavi Laida Aguirre, Stan Allen, Benjamin Aranda, Assemble, Tatiana Bilbao, Bureau Spectacular, Marlon Blackwell, Galo Canizares & Stephanie Sang Delgado, Sean Canty, Jan De Vylder, Ambra Fabi & Kersten Geers, fala, First Office, Antón García-Abril & Débora Mesa, Go Hasegawa, Steven Holl & Dimitra Tsachrelia, Wonne Ickx/PRODUCTORA, Florian Idenburg & Jing Liu, Sam Jacob, Andrés Jaque, Johnston Marklee, Ladi’Sasha Jones, l’AUC, LEFT Architects, Toshiko Mori, Catherine Mosbach, Umberto Napolitano, Daniel Norell & Einar Rodhe, Lütjens Padmanabhan, Pezo von Ellrichshausen, Mónica Ponce de León, Pier Paolo Tamburelli, Bolle Tham & Martin Videgård, UrbanLab, Welcome Projects, WORKac with Ayah Wood