A World in Miniature: The Story of a Doll’s House and an Architectural Model

What is the difference between a doll’s house and an architectural model? While doll’s houses are incredibly detailed and spatial studies of domestic space, they are often dismissed as toys, believed to be not serious and feminine in comparison to architectural models. Yet perhaps because of this unfair categorisation, doll’s houses often consider inhabitation and make the different hierarchies and power structures embedded in domestic space more visible, while architectural models tend to hide these relationships through their abstraction of space and minimal inhabitation.

In the exhibition Portraits of a Practice: The Life and Work of MJ Long, there are two doll’s houses that exist in dialogue – one made at home, and one in practice. The first that Long made for her young daughter Sal is a contemplative space that collapses many references and ideas from Long’s career into this miniature space, while also examining the gendering of space and objects throughout. The other doll’s house is a reconstruction of Colin St John Wilson and Partners’ entry to the AD Doll’s House Competition in 1982. While still a doll’s house, it is more brightly coloured and functional with its many drawers, doors and layers; detailed in its operation yet without much inhabitation.

In this discussion, doll’s house experts and fabricators will come together to discuss these similarities and differences between the two doll’s houses as well as more broadly in terms of how they can be understood as architectural models in their own right, especially in their ability to replicate (and perhaps alter) reality in miniature.

Elena Palacios Carral curated the exhibition Portraits of a Practice: The Life and Work of MJ Long. She is a director of the design and research practice Forms of Living alongside Lola Lozano Lara. Elena and holds a PhD from the Architectural Association on the studiofication of the home and teaches architecture at various UK universities. She is currently working on a research project about the life and work of the architects MJ Long and Ruth Rivera Marin.

Isabella Synek Herd recently completed her Part 1 in architecture at Cambridge University. Her research interests include post war architecture and art, specifically studying the gendered spaces in post war housing. With curator Elena Palacios Carral she designed the Portraits of a Practice: The Life and Work of MJ Long exhibition, where she also built the replica of the doll’s house that was originally Colin St John Wilson and Partners’ entry for the 1982 AD competition.

Rolfe Kentish formed Long & Kentish architects in 1994 with MJ Long. Notable works include the Aldrich Library, University of Brighton, the National Maritime Museum Cornwall, Pallant House Gallery, Chichester (with Sandy Wilson), the British Library Centre for Conservation, Porthmeor Artists’ Studios and Cellars, St Ives. He formerly worked with Colin St John Wilson and Partners, mainly on the British Library and AD Doll's House Design Competition, and also with MJ Long on smaller artist’s studio projects, from 1982 to 1994. Following the death of MJ Long in 2018, Rolfe continues working with artist’s studio and other projects in Cambridge, Cornwall, London and Somerset.

This event is part of the Portraits of Practice event series that accompanies the exhibition on show in the AA Gallery titled Portraits of a Practice: The Life and Work of MJ Long. The series takes the themes and topics explored within the exhibition as its starting point to discuss the gendering of spaces and objects within architecture and its related disciplines.

Please get in touch to let us know of any access requirements that you might have and how we can best accommodate these. If you are unable to attend physically but would like to participate in the event remotely please email publicprogramme@aaschool.ac.uk.

Image: MJ Long and Colin St John Wilson with the AD competition Doll's House, 1982. Courtesy RIBA Collections.