About Spaceplay | Handcrafted Brutalist Miniatures

Welcome to Spaceplay HQ

You’ve found your way to the heart of the operation. This is where stories are poured as concrete, where memories are stored in rough textures, and Brutalist Architecture is loved again. Spaceplay is a brand built from my personal project that got out of hand in the best kind of way. Scroll down and I’ll tell you how it started.

Scroll to Explore my Story's Layers

LAYER 0: Where It Really Started

They say the places you grow up leave a mark.

For me, it was concrete playgrounds, post-war schools, curb edges, and hard city surfaces. I learned about the world through texture, form, and movement. Climbing walls. Tracing slabs. Later, skateboarding through urban spaces in search of the smoothest concrete and steepest stairs.

I didn’t know it then, but I was building a connection to architecture long before I studied it.

Looking back, I think Spaceplay started there. Not with a business plan, but with a feeling. A connection to places that felt solid, structured, and real.

"I wanted Something that felt closer to designing as play.
Something that could reconnect me to making."

LAYER 1: The Tools and the Tension

Studying architecture felt natural. I loved drawing, designing, and model-making. I loved turning ideas into physical form.

But architectural practice became increasingly digital and disconnected from making. More screen time. Less material. Less contact with the object itself.

That disconnect affected me.

After being made redundant during an economic downturn, I chose not to return to conventional practice. I wanted to build something more creative, more hands-on, and more personal. Something that treated design as exploration, not production.

LAYER 2: A Space to Play

So I gave myself a timeframe, a small budget, and an open door.

Along with two friends, I started experimenting. No real plan. No product. We wanted to test ideas. Laser cutters, 3D printers, architectural model-making. Physical, tactile, process-driven work. Nothing too polished. Everything informed by the mindset of architecture, but free from its constraints.

That’s how Spaceplay began. A space to play with process, to rediscover the joy of making something real.

"They weren’t cold. They weren’t lifeless.
They had texture. They had history. And for me, they had a kind of quiet heroism. The underdogs of architecture."

LAYER 3: Finding the Underdog

I didn’t set out to focus on Brutalism. But I kept circling back to it.

Not the glossy new builds, but the buildings people had stopped looking at. Car parks, housing blocks, underpasses. Places full of presence, rhythm, and memory.

There was warmth in them. Texture. Memory. Presence.

They felt honest. They had history. And for me, they had a kind of quiet heroism. The underdogs of architecture.

Slowly, Spaceplay shifted:from experiments in model-making to artistic tributes of these overlooked giants. Miniatures of iconic places that shaped the urban experience and the everyday memories of cities.

LAYER 4: What It Means Now

Today, Spaceplay is still small, still slow, and still personal.

Everything is made by hand in my UK-based studio. Each model starts with deep architectural research and ends with something tactile, weighty, and lasting.

I make these pieces to hold memory. To help people feel closer to the places that have shaped their own journey.

Architecture isn’t something distant. It’s the backdrop to all of our special moments and memories. And sometimes, the parts you’re told to ignore are the ones worth remembering most.

Brutalism = Beautiful

Want to find out more?

Click on the links below for even more insights

About Spaceplay

Learn Spaceplay's origin story here...

Why Brutalism?

Preston Bus Station, Iconic UK Brutalist Archiecture and Concrete design

Learn more about Brutalism here...

Meet the Studio

Get to know the people I work with here...

How I Make Things

See how I design and make things here...

Play Brutalist Missions

Discover my Brutalist Missions game here...

Read My Brutalist Diary

Find out about my Brutalist adventures here...