7N were delighted to be invited to design and contribute to the opening exhibition of the Space for Architecture, Carbon & Environment (SpACE) initiative, a new pop-up venue in Edinburgh to raise awareness of the climate emergency and the role that architects and the built environment can play to address it.

The SpACE exhibition, which was instigated by Rab and Denise Bennetts to coincide with the 26th UN Climate Change Conference (COP26) in Glasgow, was housed within the old Lauriston Fire Station at the Edinburgh College of Art. The exhibition and events space provided a place for debate to convey the urgency of achieving zero-carbon targets, and is an opportunity to engage the community and design professionals in collaborative, sustainable, future place-making.



In the spirit of Edinburgh’s sustainable journey to zero carbon we set ourselves a challenge to design the exhibition using the minimum amount of recyclable materials and components.

The graphics were printed directly on to Dufaylite board which is made entirely of FSC grade paper, using an internal honeycomb structure to give it rigidity. Each board is connected together using custom designed, birch plywood, “Yoke” connectors to form a Y-shaped structure. It is just the boards and the Yoke connectors and a half-housed dry joint. No glue and no other structure or framing is involved. This allows the exhibition to be quickly assembled, relocated and re-purposed and ultimately recycled. It was an interesting challenge to see how we could do much more with less, in a lean piece of design.

To read more about the exhibition head to space-edinburgh.com/