What If…? / Scotland at the V&A Dundee

What if…?/Scotland – Ideas For A Better Place
Exhibition at V&A Dundee – 7N Architects

Our submission for the Design for Good category in the 2022 SDA awards is an exhibition at V&A Dundee which advocated a nationwide engagement initiative to re-discover the civic role of architecture by engaging architects directly with citizens and communities throughout Scotland.

Architecture unplugged …..

7N Architects were commissioned by the Scotland + Venice partnership in 2019 to represent Scotland at the Venice Biennale. The Biennale’s curator Hashim Sarkis set the theme for 2020 Biennale, asking “How Will We Live Together?”.
Our response was to consider how architects can work more closely with the people who use the buildings and spaces they create.
Back in early 2020, 7N brought 25 architects and designers together with 25 citizens from five communities across Scotland: Wester Hailes in Edinburgh, Paisley in Renfrewshire, Annan in Dumfries and Galloway, Elgin in Morayshire, and Lerwick in Shetland.

Pairing each citizen with an architect or designer we asked the citizens to share one hope, dream or wish to make their place better. In response their architect/designer created an idea - What if …… we did something like this? In each place the collaborations started with a walk to share thoughts, experiences and possibilities for that location.
In Lerwick, a teenager in care simply wanted a bedroom they could decorate themselves so they felt more of a sense of belonging. In Annan there was a wish to create a boatshed by the river where older people could pass on their boat-building skills to the younger members of the community. The most striking thing about the engagement was the energy, enthusiasm and innovative thinking generated by the creative conversation between the architects and the citizens.

With the participation in the Venice Biennale being cancelled the opportunity arose to bring the exhibition directly to a Scottish audience at V&A Dundee in May 2021.
The wishes and the ideas from each citizen/architect pairing were presented on a series of panels representing the five places. Their voices have also been captured in a series of films by Bash Art Creative, which enrich the stories behind the sketches and ideas in the exhibition.
The centrepiece of the exhibition was the Cloud of Dreams. The wishes of all the citizens who have taken part are written on cards are suspended above the room, alongside those of visitors to the exhibition, to form the Cloud of Dreams.
As the country emerged from the pandemic the exhibition encouraged people to dare to wish that they lived in better places, to keep asking What if …? and for Architects to reclaim a central, civic role, in answering these questions.