Modelmaking: The Latest Architecture and News

Ambitious and diverse, models are representative tools non-exclusive to architects. Peculiar fascination with miniatures – and what they tell us about our larger world- extends to all ages, cultures, and purposes. From scaled temples of clay from 200 B.C. found in Mexico, ceramic models carried during medieval Islamic journeys, Victorian doll houses, and LEGOS, models are more than baby buildings. Miniatures unveil the essentials, explain much larger concepts, contain intimate and historical data, and invite us to challenge our known selves and perspective.

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For centuries, physical modeling has been a staple of architectural education and practice. Allowing the designer and client to explore a scheme in plan, elevation, and perspective all at once, the physical model aims to simulate the spatial relationship between volumes and to understand constructive systems. 

Even in an age of ultra-high quality rendering, and virtual reality, physical material models represent a beloved, tried and tested method of conveying ideas both during the design process and at presentation stage. Whether through a rapid, five-minute volumetric test of paper models, or a carefully sculpted timber construction detail, careful choice of material can greatly assist the modeling process, allowing designers to remain abstract, or test physical properties of structural systems.

The contact between hands and models should never be lost. Going into this experience provokes silence, forcing us to think about the care that goes into concrete models. Few words are needed, as models often tell us everything we need to know through the beauty and simplicity that goes into their creation and the importance of the manual process in an architect's work. 

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It's not easy to find theory in the implementation of architectural models: a practical model that allows you to analyze and showcase the organization of material elements according to a particular process. They also allow you to detect and modify the key elements of a project while also addressing the project's executive procedures. 

Together with architectonic construction details, the development of the constructive facets is pushed to the background up until the ultimate steps of the design process, but this is also when we identify what is appropriate for a certain stage in the process in order to facilitate a seamless execution.

In the search to bring ourselves closer to the presentation and utility of architectural models, we invite you to take a look at a series of examples:

The architectural model: a tool, a sculptural artifact, a prized possession, and yet in the digital age of BIM and Virtual Reality, perhaps becoming an enigma, a relic for settling dust. And yet, we are still making them. If you imagine that famous photo of earth from space, of every model ever made in a single image, it raises the question - where are they all? Where does the architectural model go to die?