Bartlett Graduate Exhibits at V&A / Building Centre Show

The exhibition, in collaboration with the Building Centre, celebrates the importance of model-making in architectural design. This collection of historical and contemporary models charts the evolution of architecture, from the first maquette made as a tool for thinking to a modern presentation model. Exploring the form’s history and interrogating its future, the show asks: Why are models made? How are models made? And who are models made for?

Peter is exhibiting a model from his final Master’s design project, ‘The Stone Language Centre’, which was also displayed at The Bartlett Summer Show 2021.

‘The Stone Language Centre’

Peter Davies, Architecture MArch

Native UK stone has gained renewed interest as a structural building material, due to new structural stone technologies and its low levels of embodied carbon.

The Stone Language Centre addresses the future of obsolete UK stone quarries and is established to re-activate the dormant granite quarries of Nant Gwrtheyrn, North Wales. Nant’s quarries were abandoned in the 1930s, following a decline in the demand of granite. The Welsh Language Centre reclaimed the Nant in the 1980s, and the valley experienced a shift from exporting natural resources to exporting knowledge and culture. The Stone Language Centre aims to draw on the rich cultural and industrial character of the area, acting as a laboratory for innovation, education and construction. The project advocates a revival of structural stone construction and demonstrates the whole-life benefits of stone, from extraction to material recovery and reuse.

The project creates a new form of productive landscape. It re-works natural resources and by-products of the site to form new hybridised landscapes, which stabilise and reinstate the original profile of the valley of Nant. Monolithic stone buildings house spaces for the Stone Language Centre, creating a space for learning and discovery within the rich Welsh landscape.

Peter studied Architecture MArch in PG11, tutored by Laura Allen and Mark Smout. His final, exhibited project won a Distinction and the Year 5 Portfolio Prize. He now tutors in Landscape Design at The Bartlett.

The exhibition is curated by the Building Centre exhibitions team in partnership with Simona Valeriani of the V&A’s Research Institute (VARI). It runs until 05 March at The Building Centre in Bloomsbury, London, a short walk from The Bartlett campus.

More information

• Find out more about the exhibition 
• See Peter Davies’ project at The Bartlett Summer Show Archive 
• Visit Peter Davies’ Instagram profile

Image: ‘The Stone Language Centre’ by Peter Davies, Architecture MArch,  PG11, 2021