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Modelling Ideas, Exhibition Catalogue, Alison Fairley, Andrea Mina, Peter Downton, (editors), Melbourne: RMIT School of Architecture and Design/Melbourne Museum, 2007. ISBN: 978-0-9775711-1-6. Exhibition Venue: Melbourne Museum.
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homo faberM O D E L L I N G I D E A S
EDITED BY ALISON FAIRLEY
ANDREA MINA
PETER DOWNTON
the focus is not on the working model, or its method of manufacturing, but rather on the role that models play in representing ideas.
homo faberM O D E L L I N G I D E A S
MODELLING IDEAS THROUGH MANUAL MEANS: AN ANALYSiS OF THE ‘MANUAL IDEAS’ STUDIO PETER DOWNTON & ANDREA MINA
MANUAL IDEAS: STUDIO MODELS
FROM IDEAS TO MODELS: AN INTROSPECTIVE REPORT PETER DOWNTON
GIVING FORM TO IDEAS ANDREA MINA
POISE: AN OVERVIEW MARK BURRY
POISE STUDIO MODELS
DEVELOPMENT OF THE LED STICK
M. HANK HAEUSLER
CONTEXT-SPECIFIC LIGHTWEIGHT STRUCTURES IN ARCHITECTURE
JEROME FRUMAR
SCREENRESOLUTION PAUL NICHOLAS & TIM SCHORK
DESIGN MODELS FOR BKK ARCHITECTS MUMA GALLERY COMPETITION 2006 RORY HYDE
HERTZIAN SPACE: MODELLING SPATIAL PRESENCE MARK TAYLOR
EXPLORING THE ROLE DIGITAL MODELS
SARAH BENTON
BEAUTY & BRAINS ABOUT MODELS JULIETTE PEERS
POISE DIARY: MOMENTS FROMS THE STUDIO JULIETTE PEERS
MAKING LANDSCAPE CRAIG DOUGLAS & ROSELEA MONACELLA
RE-MAKING: IDEAS AND MODELS CRAIG DOUGLAS & PETER DOWNTON
A HOUSE FOR HERMES: THE HOUSE OF MY FATHER CHARLES ANDERSON
DESIGNING OPTICAL GEOMETRY AND CREATING HOLOGRAPHIC IMAGES
MARTINA MRONGOVIUS
COMMUNICATING IDEAS - SHARING INFORMATION DOMINIK HOLZER
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In the second Homo Faber exhibition in 2007 the focus is not
on the working model, or its method of manufacturing,
but rather on the role that models play in representing ideas.
For a person who has not been educated in architecture or
design the very thought that models can exist, for some purpose
other than to prefigure a completed building, is potentially
anathema. Yet, every architect and architecture student learns
that models can express a range of themes, ideas and desires
none of which are necessarily constructable or even prefigure
a design solution. Few of these models are ever seen by the
general public and it is rare that an opportunity arises to gain
a more detailed level of understanding about their production,
application and meaning.
The idea model is one of the most powerful examples of pre-
architectural form that is available to the designer. In its more
metaphysical guise it can embody complex philosophical ideas,
it can evoke emotions or offer unique tactile or even aural
sensations and it in no way has to resemble a building. In the
form that architects more commonly call a “conceptual model”
it can encompass the essence of a vision for a building. In this
variation the model represents a halfway-house between the
building and some formative idea that will thematically define
the completed architecture. This freedom of expression is one
of the most important qualities of the idea model and it is seen
in many of the exhibited works that have been produced by
students, professionals and academics.
The Homo Faber project is led by a team of senior academics
from RMIT University and the University of Newcastle.
The members of the team are Professor Mark Burry,
Professor Michael Ostwald, Professor Peter Downton
and Associate Professor Andrea Mina. With the support
of a major national grant from the Australian Research
Council (ARC), the team is proud to present the second
in this important series.
MICHAEL OSTWALD
Like the architectural drawing, the architectural model is
one of the primary tools used by designers to shape the built
environment. While other design tools have been employed
at various times throughout history, only the model and the
drawing have retained their primacy today. However, in the last
decade the relationship between the model and the drawing
has begun to change. As computers blur the distinction
between drawings and virtual models, and as physical models
are increasingly manufactured by computer-controlled devices,
these architectural tools need to be critically reconsidered.
While architectural drawings have been featured in many
exhibitions, the architectural model has rarely been the subject
of the same level of scrutiny. This realisation was the catalyst
for Homo Faber: a series of exhibitions, symposia and books
reflecting on the changing role of the architectural model
both in contemporary practice and in academia.
Homo Faber is Latin for “man the maker” – a reference
to the manner in which humans use tools to shape, control
or understand the environment. In the first Homo Faber
exhibition held in 2006 at the Melbourne Museum,
the focus was on the way in which architectural models
serve as working tools to assist in the development of a design.
Major architectural practices from across the region presented
their working models and took part in a series of interviews to
find out how architects use rough models and why? A parallel
theme in the first exhibition was the exploration of different
modes of making and different scales of representation.
To elucidate the second theme, the four curators exhibited
models constructed using a variety of different techniques
and for a range of representational purposes. In one pair of
projects, exquisite hand-crafted, timber and brass models were
exhibited alongside bright, plastic, computer-generated and
rapid-prototyped models. In a second pair, large plaster models
of building details were juxtaposed with miniscule organic
models possibly depicting entire worlds.
PREFACE
Johnson is not actually holding the AT&T model up from his
body, as if celebrating an award, rather he is holding it out
from his chest, as if either offering the model to the city,
or perhaps receiving the model as gift.
There is a long history of the architectural model as symbolic
offering. In the mosaic above the main door of Hagia Sophia
in Istanbul the Emperor Justinian is pictured holding
a miniature of the church and reaching out with it towards
the Virgin and Child. In Gloucester Cathedral the Abbot Osric
is depicted holding a model of the church to his chest and
in Rheims there is a representation of the architect Hugh
Libergier presenting a model of Saint Nicaise as an offering.
These examples, which have much in common with the image
of Philip Johnson on the cover of Time magazine, use models
to represent the idea of architecture. The person holding the
model is symbolically invested with the power of creation
(either as designer or patron) and they offer up the object
of their exertions as a gift to god or to humanity. The models
in these examples are not used for developing a design,
or for assisting its construction, they simply stand for an
idea; architecture as offering. Yet, while working models
In January 1979 American architect Philip Johnson was
famously featured on the cover of Time magazine holding
aloft a model of his AT&T Tower. At first glance the model
is barely recognisable and to the uninitiated it more closely
resembles a trophy or award. This reading is not inappropriate
as any architectural commission for a high rise building could
be considered a major prize and perhaps Johnson is celebrating
his win. Furthermore, the sense that the model is a trophy
is exaggerated by the way in which Johnson is photographed
against a backdrop of New York towers. Johnson stands
amongst these towers as an equal in power, presence and
stature. His grey clothes mimic the colour of the nearby
towers, his head and shoulders are silhouetted against the
skyline. A close inspection of the base of the photograph
reveals that Johnson is actually standing on a constructed set.
He is both part of one model and supporting another; a feat
which simultaneously questions the significance of scale and
demonstrates the way in which models can be used to
suggest power or superiority. Yet, with all of this happening
in the image, it is easy to miss a minor detail that changes,
in subtle but important ways, the reading of the cover.
and finished models are important communication
tools, it is the idea models which potentially possess the
greatest symbolic power. While Johnson may appear to be
magnanimously offering a gift to the city, the act of giving
reinforces the extensive sphere of Johnson’s own influence.
As this example shows, when stripped of its traditional purpose
(of directly serving the design and construction of a building)
the additional representational capacity of the architectural
model is revealed.
The history of the architectural model is typically structured
around the presumption that models are first and foremost
representational objects and that their primary power is in the
communication of intent. Regardless of whether the model is
a working detail to solve a construction problem, or a finished
model for presentation to a client, it represents the desire to
complete a building. However, many models, like the historic
examples described above, have little or no connection to the
production of architecture.
A visit to any major architectural practice or school of
architecture soon reveals a collection of so-called “concept
MICHAEL OSTWALD
INTRODUCTION: MODELLING IDEAS AND THE POWER OF REPRESENTATION
models”. The common characteristic of these models is not
found in their materiality or in their making, rather it is one
of intent and distance. These models are demonstrations
of the proposed essence of a design but they retain a clear
separation from any suggestion that they represent an end-
state. Concept models suggest the stylised kernel of an idea
that may eventually find its place in a building, urban plan
or interior. These objects are a protean attempt by a designer
to embody or abstract, in three-dimensional form, an idea.
Despite the fact that conceptual models have materiality,
it should not be assumed that they are necessarily either
architectonic or architectural. Some concept models bear
a closer relationship to architecture than others. Those
produced by students tend to be more abstract while those
produced by practitioners often more closely resemble some
aspect of the completed building. However, the degree to
which the model resembles a building is far less important
than its capacity to evoke the spirit of an idea. Consider
the models featured in the present volume that have been
produced by Jarrod Manevski, Phil Smith, Camilla Zanzanaini
and Greg Teague. In terms of their intent, these are classic
conceptual models. They offer clear and evocative gestures
towards architectural expression while maximising the distance
between their actual form and the possible form of a finished
building. These models are passionate and compelling dreams
of future worlds and experiences. The models described by
Dominik Holzer in the present volume also fit into this first
category; they suggest architectural qualities without defining
a finished building. In contrast to the works of Manevski,
Smith, Zanzanaini and Teague the models of Simon Pearson
and Allison Claney are more recognisably architectural. Pearson
and Claney present concept models with screens and walls that
define enclosure, view-framing and qualities of light and shade.
Yet, despite coming closer to an architectural form, these
models still cannot be seen as an end product. In all of these
cases the model serves to translate an idea from the designer’s
mind into architectural form.
There is a second category of conceptual models which could,
more correctly, be described as miniatures. The theoretical
shift delineated in this category is away from the supposition
that small objects inevitably prefigure large objects. The
epistemological pavilions of Peter Downton and the interior
realms of Andrea Mina might be examples of this approach.
In the former case Downton’s objects are completed works.
They possess the signs of a refined architectural language
and they appear to be models, but there the similarities end.
Downton’s miniatures do not represent future forms at some
other scale. If they model anything at all, other than the
refinement of architectural form, it is an interrogation of the
relationship between thinking, designing and making. It could
be said that these miniatures exist to model concepts and that
any architectural by-product is simply evidence of the thought
process. Mina’s works are similarly finished objects that also
serve as catalysts for thought. They provoke questions about
scale and interiority and they are primarily, as Mina says,
“things unto themselves”. Each of Mina’s models has qualities
and characteristics that are simultaneously organic and
architectural. The miniatures are also undeniably mythopoeic;
some forms become wing-like or appear as caves or insect
hives, others look like lost utopian communities, trapped
in amber. The models of Downton and Mina each have their
own innate qualities and concerns that do not prefigure
an alternative scale construction.
Finally, there is a less common category of idea model where
the model serves as the architecturalisation of a concept.
In these rare examples an idea is modelled for the purpose
of explanation or analysis. The intent here is not to suggest
how some idea may be converted into a building, but
rather to use the techniques of architectural modelling
to interrogate a non-architectural subject. Artists, scientists
and mathematicians all use architectural analogies, and
often recognisable architectural models, for explaining non-
architectural ideas. These too are concept models but not
generally of the kind produced by architects.
If then, in the context of architectural practice, the working
models produced by architects qualify as examples of homo
faber—models in the service of work— then perhaps idea and
concept models might be considered under the banner homo
ludens; the man who plays? If we remove the more wilful
or frivolous connotations from the concept of play and consider
it in the terms described by the anthropologist Roger Caillois
then this may be possible. For Caillois, play is the ritualised
and repetitive tracing of cultural values and ideals in our
everyday practices. Play is not wanton or meaningless;
it is the often exultant or euphoric act of creativity that occurs
within the boundaries of a community. If the community is one
of architects and designers, then the conceptual model may be
the result of the type of loosely constrained, yet energetically
pursued, creativity that Caillois sees as a characteristic of play.
Regardless of the definition, conceptual models are as much
about what the viewer brings to them as what the designer
has put into them. In this sense, working models and
presentation models are about closing down the possibilities
of interpretation while concept models expand them.
The studio was named ‘Manual Ideas’ to express the
connection of the hands and processes of thought, and
centred on investigating the physical modelling of ideas.
Strictly, ideas can be modelled by other ideas – this is part
of metaphor. In the studio ideas were to be modelled by small
physical objects. The process still entails metaphor, but
a shift of medium is also required, and this was the process
of greatest interest, focus and difficulty.
The Interior Design students engaged in this design studio
were predominantly from second year with a couple from third
year. The projects set in the studio asked students to make
physical models to say something about some rather unphysical
ideas. As an initial project they were each asked to model
an idea they selected from a provided list that included terms
such as ‘comfort’, ‘responsibility’ and ‘isolation’; next they had
to select and address in modelled form, two of these ideas
juxtaposed in some way. For their third project students were
asked to think of three spaces each with a different function
and concentrate on modelling the relationships between the
spaces and also develop the narratives surrounding the spaces
and the ways in which they related. From this they progressed
PETER DOWNTON & ANDREA MINA
INTRODUCTION
Models in architecture, and most other design areas, serve as
representations of design intentions. Frequently, such models
are made after designing has been done by other means;
sometimes designing is done while making models. In either
case they serve a function in the overall process of designing
something such as a building and bringing it to completion.
In most cases the model serves as a communication device
which enables the transfer of intent and information from
one body to the next, be it from the designer to the detailer
or from designer to the client. The emphasis in these models
is on the thing – let’s assume a building – that will be
constructed. Clearly, there are a number of ideas or concepts
informing the design which are to be expressed in the design.
These are often discussed in a design process, but they are not
singled out for examination in their own right.
The discussion here grows from an effort examine the
modelling of ideas in a fairly pure form by running a design
studio where this somewhat artificial task could be conducted
as part of the overarching Homo Faber research project.
to identifying three activities – one for a single person, one for
five and a third for twenty people and modelling the relations
between the spaces housing the activities and between the
spaces and the site. The narrative in which the activity-housing
spaces and their inter-relationships were embedded was
also an enriching element. For their final project, students
reflected on the idea of ‘home’ and sought to model this for
themselves. While there was some universality in this, people
quickly realised that the concept varied greatly from person to
person and that they needed to focus on their own personal
concepts. From this base, they were more able to explore the
degree to which these were more widely shared and, by this
means, at least offer echoes of familiarity and trigger feelings
of recognition.
It was evident throughout that the models produced were
often the result of rich thought and complex ideas, but that
there are great difficulties involved in giving physical form
to a set of ideas not typically thought to have physical
components. Frequently the pieces produced were soaked
in metaphoric layers, but the intended readings could not be
accessed without the author’s guidance. Once some small
MODELLING IDEAS THROUGH MANUAL MEANS: AN ANALYSIS OF THE ‘MANUAL IDEAS’ STUDIO
1
insight into the approach was provided by the author, reading
of the model and an understanding of the author’s modes of
expression and exploration unfurled.
Throughout the fifteen sessions of the studio, conversations
around the ideas under consideration by each student were
often quite personal and inevitably strongly felt. Studio
sessions took the form of group conversations led by Andrea
Mina and Peter Downton. These conversations covered the
ideas themselves, their exploration and their subsequent
representation through a three-dimensional model, critiques
of the ideas and of the modelling, discussions of possible
further directions of discovery and the materials and
techniques for making. Actual making was done elsewhere.
Karen Hamilton (both an interior designer and jeweller)
conducted a workshop-based weekly session covering
making, materials and techniques and requiring students to
undertake some set making assignments. Andrea and Peter
could also address such issues, but the principle focus of the
studio sessions was about the ideas in each project and their
development and expression in the models.
Some of the issues introduced above warrant more detailed
reflection and exploration; their expansion and discussion
follows in subsequent sections.
MODELS AS FOCI OF CONVERSATION
Students’ models served as foci of the weekly conversations;
without the objects on the table the discussions would
neither have been as rich or as interesting to the participants.
Those sitting around the table showed their own work and
appreciated, supported and critiqued the work of their peers.
The fact of having invested personal concerns and effort
in a model makes the producer’s interest in it considerable.
If it has been undertaken with care and commitment,
the author has intellectual and emotional attachment to
the work, and an interest in promoting and defending it.
In nearly every case, students had an interest in hearing
thoughts from others about what might have been different
and what might be done in a future model. Almost regardless
of the topic and quality of a model, it served to facilitate
conversation and hence learning. This can be also said
of designs that are described through images and pinned
on the wall. However, in this instance, because the work
is small and positioned on a table, a normal conversational
situation is established. With drawings on the wall, the typical
crit group is arrayed in a shallow semi-circle with the studio
leaders and/or other critics nearest to the images while the
remainder of the studio group is at various distances; this may
indicate degrees of interest and involvement. It also means that
the conversation is at the front and tends to be a performance
watched by an audience. Circling models on a table, the studio
members and leaders are in a more equal arrangement. People
in this case often moved so as to get closer views – even if this
meant they crouched or stood rather than sat. There is much
to be said regarding the actual handling of an object in
contrast to the detached viewing of an image located on
the wall. This setting, and the attitude of the studio leaders,
encouraged everyone to offer opinions and share concepts,
techniques and experiences.
Whilst the conventions of architectural drawings demand
the author convert ideas and desires into a formal language,
which is in effect an abstraction of reality, the physical model
provides a more direct representation of intent which is more
easily understood by others. In this way the students’ intent
and subsequent outcomes as communicated by the models
became readily available to all which in turn induced an
atmosphere conducive to the free flow of conversation.
This role of models as facilitators of a conversation is easy
to overlook, but was shown to have considerable significance
in this studio. That they were mostly small models – often
around palm size – and therefore required fairly close
examination is important. It led to reasonable physical
closeness, concentration on the object and therefore the ideas
under discussion, and these behaviours helped produce the
observed richness of the conversations. Clearly the participants
have to be motivated, thoughtful, appropriately verbally adept,
and not overcome by nerves – as in any such seminar.
The contention here is that the models helped the students
to prepare and contributed in the ways discussed above.
They thus aid learning. As designed works they played several
roles in the learning of the studio participants. They focused
the thinking about the ideas; they were an integral part of the
translation of those ideas into physical forms; they were central
to learning about making; and, in addition, they were part
of the process of learning from others. Of principle concern
here is that through facilitation of conversations they
encouraged sharing of knowledge and triggered ideas
in different members of the group.
CONVERSATION’S ROLE IN EVALUATION
The role of the models as facilitators of conversation and
hence learning extends to their contribution to evaluation.
In design, and more widely in practice, models are constantly
assessed and evaluated against a wide array of criteria – some
clearly specified and well articulated others that are intrinsic,
unexamined and possibly unshared.1 Some evaluation is almost
instantaneously carried out by designers and results basically
in a yes or a no, a decision to continue with the directions
represented by the model or to veer in another direction
in the search space of design ideas. A similar and more
protracted process is conducted by groups of designers,
or groups involving others – maybe consultants or clients.
In these cases conversation is necessary to share values,
debate degrees of success and discuss alternative future paths.
Individual designers parallel these conversations by conducting
their own internally or even vocalise them and debate with
themselves as a means of evaluating their progress.
Again models have a role in conversations.
In the studio circumstance there was also a frequent evaluative
component to the conversations. This had at least two forms.
Mostly evaluation played a role in discussions about what could
be better. Obviously this entails values and positions about
what should be the case. The studio leaders attempted to
provide a democratic space of engagement and conversation
by trying to argue these positions rather than asserting them
as unchallengeable certainties. We also encouraged students
to reflect on, and openly report, the values they brought to
their evaluations of the work of themselves and others. In this
way conversations quickly spread to encompass ideas that were
not about a model although brought into being by a model.
Each model, and the process around it, had to be assessed
for the purpose of awarding a grade to each student.
Four of these periods of evaluation and grading were
conducted as part of the final presentations on each model.
In one session each student was required to submit a grade
for every model presented including their own; these results
were averaged and formed part of the overall grade of that
project. The final project assessment was a special event
with guest critics and reduced input from studio members.
In physical layout and relations of people to work, it mirrored
the crit panel outlined above. Utilising these processes, the
models again served as facilitators of conversations – between
students, students and staff, and between staff (including
guest critics) – they were conversations debating values
and degrees of success.
IN WHAT SENSE ARE THESE OUTCOMES MODELS?
It is simple to call the objects produced by the students
in the studio models because they are small, carefully made,
and can be understood as representing something. They look
like models. This is somewhat simplistic and it is revealing
to consider why.
Most of the literature on models is traditionally a science and
philosophy literature concerned with their role in discovery.
It concerns the relation between the model of something and
the original being modelled. Good exemplars are the use
of knowledge about the flow of water in pipes as an early
model of electricity in wires or the planetary system as a model
of the atom. In each case the model is a model of something
that is less well understood than the entity used as the model.
What are these things made in the studio models of? Nothing
at all – they do not represent something that is extant.
They are not models of works from the canon of architecture
or interiors for instance. Compare them with the types of
models seen in design practices and which take their place
as part of a design process intended to result in perhaps
a building or a product. These models may be made during the
designing process as thinking and designing tools, or they may
be made after at least initial designing, as representational and
communication tools – usually for showing others (probably
clients) the present state of the design. This class of models
is projective. Such models are intended to describe what will
come into existence in the final product or building; they serve
a function in making the final building exist. Effort is spent
to make the final outcome like the model. The model
represents an intention; the outcome can be understood
as representing the model.
None of this is true for the models made in this studio.
Some of the pieces could, with various degrees of structural
and detail effort, be scaled up one, two or even five hundred
times and made into a (small) habitable building. This was
never specified in the studio. In two of the projects there
was a specification that spaces for an activity or for a number
of people be designed, but the focus was on these and
their relations to other spaces, not on the production of
the remainder of the elements required to form an entire
building. So, the pieces were not models of extant buildings,
nor were they models for intended buildings – even if some
could potentially become so. One useful descriptor of a
model is that it can be used to answer questions of interest
to an interrogator that could be asked of the thing or system
modelled. It can be seen that a model of an existing building,
or a model representing an intended building, can both
be used in this manner. It is difficult to say whether-or-not
this is true in the case of the models of ideas in this studio.
The answer hinges on the degree to which the relations
between the ideas and the model can be understood as well
as the qualities of relations.
Two other uses of the word ‘model’ can be considered.
‘A model student’ is one displaying characteristics that are
desirable to see emulated by other students. ‘An old model
computer’ is a phrase that could be applied to an individual
example of a particular type of computer. Each computer
type probably had a production run of tens of thousands.
In this example ’model’ refers to the type and not strictly
to the instance of it; more correctly, this is a token. Neither
sense illuminates the nature of the models made in this studio
other than to define them as not conforming. However, one
sense of the word ’token’ is helpful, for a token is an emblem
of something abstract. We are used to emblems standing VAUGHAN HOWARD BRIEF #5
as a small shelter. Size and time (where plants are involved)
are major issues in landscape architecture courses with respect
to full-scale productions. In the case of industrial design
concerning products, size is infrequently such an issue –
here the problem is expense and complexities of materials
and manufacturing processes. Fashion is different; students
can deal with the full size and often the materials and means
of making of their designs. There is sense in which the studio
models are full-size; they are the size they were asked to be.
They are in their intended materials, not in a material chosen
to simply represent a future building material. If they are
regarded as being at a scale smaller than one to one and
at least tentatively considered as potential full-scale structures
then a range of adjustments in the way they are viewed is
necessary, as sizes, thicknesses and fixings all become items
requiring detailed consideration.
Armed with this cloud of ideas about the term ‘model’ and
even accepting doubts about whether it is the right term
to describe what the students made, we will continue to
use the term as it is the word most likely to be applied to
them by others. In some instances they could be small
sculptures or large pieces of jewellery.
MATERIALISATION
Regardless of what the ‘models’ are thought to be, their
makers confront the same issues. They had to establish
a way of understanding the idea or ideas that were the
givens of any one of the projects – whether these were pre-
specified or self-selected. They also needed to find a way
of dealing with their particular views in a physical form,
what materials to use and how to make their model.
Such things often do not evolve sequentially, and if they do,
the order in which they unfold may vary instance to instance.
It seems that most often these matters at least partially
co-evolve and mutually inform and shape one another.
Surrounding each student’s discoveries and decisions
is a narrative giving an account of their idea, the ways
they are been seen, what is significant and how the whole,
or a particular form or material, symbolises an idea. Confronted
with a mute object the viewer can conjure concepts concerning
the ideas embodied in the object. These are easily at odds
with the intentions of the maker. Minimally, the maker needs
to provide a small key to unlock their intended ideas pervading
the piece. Once there is this understanding, the relation
between the ideas being dealt with and the model presented
can be unravelled, enriched and explored by the viewer.
Once this narrative is shared, the viewer’s ability to understand
the piece entirely in their own terms is reduced, while the
maker’s intentions become available in varying degrees.
The reading is then potentially played out as a resolution
of the tensions between the two understandings. Additional
inputs from others, as in the studio, enhance the possibilities.
The processes of moving from idea to physical form entail
many possible choices, decisions and evaluations.
How arbitrary are choices of forms and shape to express
ideas? On what grounds, for example, does a designer
decide that something round (maybe a circle or a sphere)
symbolises or represents the universal, or completeness,
or calmness? Sometimes the choice involves selecting an
historic cultural archetype that has been valued in one
or more cultures for centuries; sometimes the choice rests
on an original argument. There are positions in between.
There are variations in the degree to which the representational
form can be shared. In the case of the argued representation,
new insight or understanding may be offered as an alternative
to the comfort and ‘rightness’ of the culturally entrenched
form. The choice process can be predominantly emotionally
driven or it might be essentially intellectual. There is a history
of claims about a form equalling an idea just as there are
similar, although disputed, claims concerning blue being
a cold colour whilst red is warm – these things are not
universally agreed. Particularly post-1980 there are well-
documented elaborate arguments often drawing on
philosophic or literary theory to pin architectural outcomes
to complex intellectual programs..
The process of deriving form from idea, or at least offering
a post-rationalisation of the form based on an a set of ideas,
can be characterised as a game in which the designer sets up
some rules and then continues to play out the consequences: if
round things are taken to represent universal calm,
for brands, organizations or countries. They are symbolic
representations of an abstract concept or idea. These models
are laden with symbolic representations, with visual metaphors
and metonyms for the abstract ideas they were intended
to model. The activity of forming these is central to this
discussion, but difficult to illuminate.
One last examination of the characteristics of these models
is necessary. That they are models of something existing
or something intended was ruled out above. As physical
things they do not represent other physical things; they are
themselves. There is thus no possible mapping of attributes
between physical things. These models are ends in themselves
and in this sense are not models at all, but final outcomes.
Such objects are common in design schools. They are easier
to produce in terms of time and resources than buildings
or products. They do not have to satisfy the dictates
of construction, costs, clients or regulatory requirements
that intended future objects are subject to; rather their
ends are educational. Full size objects occasionally get
constructed in architecture and interior courses, but they
are typically portions of a possible whole or something such
As physical things they do not represent other physical things; they are themselves.
BRIEF #1 (FROM LEFT TO RIGHT)
VAUGHAN HOWARD KATIE COLLINS
then various other attributes of the ideas or the brief follow
from this and an audience is asked to read and understand
the outcomes in light of the original generative rules.
Designers derive forms for their current task from their
personal catalogues of forms, re-using, re-interpreting
and evolving prior forms. This behaviour may support the
cultural archetype or the intellectual argument approach
or anything in between.) Part of the success of the mapping
of form onto idea results from the degree of literality
employed. Too much abstraction leads to unintelligibility;
too little results in cringe-worthy banality. The tasks for
the students in this studio entailed pitching their ideas and
physical mappings at an appropriate level of literalness.
Even when this was successful, consistency in following
through the consequences of the self-imposed rules,
or the full ramifications of the metaphors established,
led to stronger outcomes.
OUTCOMES
The richness of thought and content in the work produced
is best discussed by contrasting the different approaches
adopted by Vaughan Howard and Katie Collins. Vaughan’s
response to modelling the idea of complexity was to engage
with the idea of a complex ecological system composed
of a number of number of disparate elements which through
their inter-dependent relationships form a coherent and
harmonious whole. This was manifest through the making
of a sphere composed of many parts made from contrasting
materials. The junctions between these materials were
in themselves formed along highly complex edges further
adding to the articulation of complexity. Katie, set the task
of modelling the idea of isolation, used her model as a form
of machine which demanded the active participation of the
viewer to articulate her intentions. Through the use of pulleys
and thread, fourteen small components initially located
as a unified and interlocking whole at the centre of a sphere
made from five circles of wire, were able to be individually
moved apart to the edge of the sphere. Her machine enabled
the generation of space through distance with isolation
manifest as the gap in-between.
In response to brief #3 Vaughan modelled the activities
of reading, story-telling and watching. His composition
of spaces is held together by a series of curved ribs from
which varying sized circular platforms are suspended.
The watching space dominates the composition being
accessed via a spiral staircase. The story-telling space is
located below in a space illuminated by light filtering through
the open lattice structure. This space is privileged by its central
location and large scale as it serves as the forum for social
construction through the dissemination of the stories and
knowledge gained from the reading space which is located
at the foot of the composition. The reading space is conceived
of as a quiet and introspective space.
Katie addressed the idea of a dinner party narrative
through her machine. This involved the narration of a linear
timeline experienced by the host involving the spaces of
preparation, dining and cleaning. The artefact described
a linear movement from one space to the next working with
the ideas of one space coming into being on the pretext of
that which immediately preceded it, neither being able to be
simultaneously occupied. These spaces were described by the
space contained between two timber rings joined together
by flexible brass plates allowing for the expansion and
contraction of the central space. The preparation space
is manifest through this space in its enlarged configuration
followed by its contraction during the time of dining and
by its ultimate collapse at the conclusion of the event.
The inspiration for Vaughan’s response to brief #4 is from
a quote by Thoreau who had three chairs at his cabin
in Walden, “one for solitude, two for company, and three
for society”. He has modelled some of the elements which
make up a community. The large communal singing space for
twenty is made from aluminium shingles positioned to face
upwards in the evocation of the upliftment of music with the
suggestion of an aspiration towards a higher level of being.
His space for five is a dining space intended as a space of
interaction, ritual and enjoyment, made with the shingles
facing downwards in an effort to communicate a sense of
grounding. The space for one is manifest as spherical; unique
and individual yet made from the same shingle-like building VAUGHAN HOWARD BRIEF #3
blocks used to make up the other spaces. The composition
is held together within a metal cuboid shaped frame which
may be read as representing the universal nature of that
required to make up community. Of interest is the linear
nature of this outcome in contrast to his previous artefacts
which have a dominant curvaceous characteristic. This can
be attributed to the fact of his being encouraged to engage
with materials that are not as conducive to carving from
a solid as had been his previous practice; a demonstration
in the powerful influence materials have over outcomes.
Most of the projects were done over three or four weeks each.
In the first studio sessions for each project we discussed the
ideas to be focused upon and the conversations covered each
person’s initial views of what they might deal with. Inevitably
their approaches evolved – sometimes greatly; sometimes
there was refinement rather than a change of approach.
Hearing the initial intentions of others and discussing
the array of concepts circling the ideas led to an enriched
conversational field which gathered momentum as the sessions
continued. There became both a conversation concerning the
particular project and a larger enveloping one for the studio
as a whole. As inter-personal trust increased the character
of this conversation could become more open and personal.
Throughout, however, there was a sufficient level of trust that
most people could be fairly comfortable in putting their ideas
to the others for general discussion. We made clear the notion
that no one student held a patent over an idea but that ideas
were accessible to all and it is in the physical manifestation
of the idea through the use of particular materials and their
relationships that the authors could lay claim to the ideas.
Usually in the second session of a project there were sketchy
design ideas appearing – mostly on paper. By the third session
these were more detailed, sometimes ideas were presented
in the form of a modelled mock-up and sometimes there were
the beginnings of a partially-built final model. For the last
project a rough model in an easy to use material was specified
as a required step. The final session for each project involved
presenting each model to the group. Throughout, visual and
written documentation of the projects were also required.
These emphasised designing and making processes and later
ones also sought reflection upon, and curation of, prior work.
Through the conversations surrounding the development of the
model and its final presentation, students were very conversant
with one another’s approaches and work. The models were
thus enriched in complex ways. Layers of conversation
encapsulated each of them. Connections between the one
student’s five models could be clearly seen, but throughout
there were increasingly rich connections between the work
of many of the students in the studio. There was also a group
conversational memory able to be drawn upon for commentary
and comprehension.
Another albeit abstract form of materialisation was achieved
through the photographs taken by the students of the
spaces contained within the models as distinct from imaging
the models as objects located on a surface within space.
These photographs provided beguiling effects through their
dissolution of scale and their abstraction of the materiality
of the surfaces describing the spaces. Considering this was
a studio for interior design students we felt it important
KATIE COLLINS BRIEF #3
to direct the conversations towards the making of spaces
as distinct from the making of objects .
MATERIALS
Except for a mock-up or when used in an exciting or
entertaining manner, the common materials seen in studio
modelling were banned. Card, balsawood and paper, typically
asked to represent sheet and mass construction materials,
were forbidden; foam-core was frowned upon. Students were
challenged to investigate the expressive potential of any other
material. Timbers, metals, fabrics, plaster, and clay were used
in a range of ways however as the studio progressed the use
of plaster became something to avoid. Far more unusual
materials were explored – fish scales and bones, leather,
Vaseline, oven-baked modelling putty, toilet paper and wax.
Materials were mostly glued, but precise friction-fitting,
and riveting were employed. Materials were cut, bent,
carved, sanded, vacuum-formed, woven, knitted, crocheted,
moulded and machine routed.
The large materials palette aided expressive possibilities when
compared to those materials that were banned. A fabric
might be much more useful to convey the idea of ‘comfort’
for instance than is card. In the main, however, the relation
between the materials chosen and the idea dealt with was not
this direct. It is frequently the case that the kinds of materials
used result in a more seductive outcome than can be produced
by card or balsa. There is some danger in this – perhaps the
making and materials are seducing the viewer, but the ideas
embodied are ordinary. When, however, the ideas and the
object are working in unison, the deployment of a fascinating
and carefully chosen collection of materials supports and
enhances the modelling of ideas.
Asking students to engage with material palettes that were
in the main new to them, encouraged the production of
forms and spaces that managed to negate preconceived
solutions. Of more interest was the manner in which these
different materials were joined. The common use of glue was
in many instances unsuitable which in turn led the students
to develop jointing techniques which in themselves began
to influence the nature of the forms produced and their
contained spaces. For example a circular form made from
pieces of mirrored acrylic joined by metal rings produced
space defined by the irregular angles of the planes of acrylic
relative to each other. This in turn produced an interior space
composed of multiple reflected images.
CONCLUSION
As the production of work progressed through the studio
a sense of frustration in the studio leaders began to develop
due to the enormous potential for design development
contained within the models. In so far as the models were
effective tools for the exploration and communication of ideas
and consequently the production of meaningful conversations,
they also provided glimpses of future possibilities which were
intentionally not further developed. Perhaps this provides
the foundation for further research into the use of modelling
as part of the design process.
Several of the papers in the catalogue for Homo Faber:
modelling architecture addressed the roles of models in
architectural practice. Downton, “Temporality, Representation
and Machinic Behaviours: model dialogues with self,
collaborators, clients and others” (p.33), specifically addressed
the conversational role they play with respect to practice.
1 See Marvin Minsky, ‘Matter, mind and models’, in Marvin
Minsky (ed) Semantic Information Processing, Cambridge
Massachusetts: The MIT Press, 1968, 426.VAUGHAN HOWARD BRIEF #4
MANUAL IDEAS
LECTURERS
Professor Peter Downton
Assoc. Professor Andrea Mina
PARTICIPANTS
Ahron Best
Katie Collins
Bethany Daniel
Lauren Goodman
Vaughan Howard
Takako Kajiya
Bradley Kilsby
Mary-Jane Jean
Catherine Jones
Rebecca Law
Melanie Muraca
Jonathan Ong
Myvanwy Purwo
Elizabeth Schofield
Anchalee Sroison
Eric Yang
Generally models are made to represent something that will be
constructed in the future.
The models displayed here originated in an Interior Design
studio named ‘Manual Ideas’ to express the connection
of the hands and processes of thought. It was centred on
investigating the physical modelling of ideas, rather than
designs or things. Students made physical models to say
something about some rather unphysical ideas.
As an initial project they were each asked to model an idea
they selected from a provided list that included terms such
as ‘comfort’, ‘responsibility’ and ‘isolation’; next they had
to select and address in modelled form, two of these ideas
juxtaposed in some way. For their third project students were
asked to think of three spaces each with a different function
and concentrate on modelling the relationships between the
spaces whilst developing the narratives surrounding the spaces
and the ways in which they related. From this they progressed
to identifying three activities – one for a single person, one for
five and a third for twenty people and modelling the relations
between the spaces housing the activities and between the
spaces and the site. The narrative in which the activity-housing
spaces and their inter-relationships were embedded was also
an enriching element. For their final project, students reflected
on the idea of ‘home’ and sought to model this for themselves
in such a way that more universal ideas of home could be
understood by others.
9
MANUAL IDEAS
BRIEF #1
Students were asked to produce a three dimensional piece
of work that modelled an idea they selected from a provided
list. This list included the terms – calm, care, connectivity,
comfort, complexity, flexibility, health, heaviness, history,
honesty, hope, isolation, lightness, pattern, peace, protection,
responsibility, richness, rigor, rigidity, sparse, speed, time,
truth and waste.
The piece was to be complete in itself, structurally stable
and no bigger than 200x200x200 mm. It had to possess
particular characteristics which would enable the articulation
of one, if not many stories about the selected term/idea
whilst also demonstrating an allegiance to the interior design
discipline in which it is located.
A demand was made for the highest standards
of craftsmanship.
(CLOCKWISE FROM TOP LEFT)
MYVANWY PURWO ANCHALEE SROISON VAUGHAN HOWARD KATIE COLLINS
BRIEF #2
This brief asked students to construct a three dimensional piece
of work that modelled the juxtaposition of two words selected
from a provided list. This list included the terms – calm, care,
connectivity, comfort, complexity, flexibility, health, heaviness,
history, honesty, hope, isolation, lightness, pattern, peace,
protection, responsibility, richness, rigor, rigidity, sparse,
speed, time, truth and waste.
The piece was to be made from more than two materials
(balsawood and card were prohibited) and be no bigger than
200x200x200 mm. These objects had to have the ability
to project the narratives of the relationships between the
selected ideas and the choice and juxtaposition of materials.
The production and articulation of interior space was
of paramount concern.
A demand was made for the highest standards
of craftsmanship.
(CLOCKWISE FROM TOP LEFT)
CATHERINE JONES LAUREN GOODMAN KATIE COLLINS VAUGHAN HOWARD
BRIEF #3
Students were asked to model a complex of three spaces by
concentrating on the ideas which dictated the characteristics
of each space and determined the relationships between the
spaces. The connections or transitions from one space to the
next were of critical importance together with the narratives
that could be articulated about the connections and the
complex as a whole. Unlike the previous exercises there was
a requirement to identify the function and performance
of the space prior to commencing modelling.
There was no limitation on height but a specific requirement
for the location of the object on a 200x200 mm base.
Another requirement was for the object to have the
appearance of a unified whole although comprised of more
than three spaces. Once again card and balsawood were
forbidden modelling materials.
A demand was made for the highest standards of
craftsmanship with the priority being on the communication
of spatial ideas in preference to privilege the appearance
of the model.
(CLOCKWISE FROM TOP LEFT)
VAUGHAN HOWARD ELIZABETH SCHOFIELD BETHANY DANIEL KATIE COLLINS
ERIC YANG VAUGHAN HOWARD
TAKAKO KAJIYA
ELIZABETH SCHOFIELD
LAUREN GOODMAN
BRIEF #4
This brief dealt with ideas of scale. Students were asked to
identify three different activities and the spaces required
to accommodate these activities. The three spaces were to
respectively accommodate one, five and twenty people and
to house dissimilar activities to those worked with in brief
#3.. The requirement was to model the ideas of the relations
between the spaces housing the activities and between the
spaces and the site. The narrative in which the activity-housing
spaces and their inter-relationships were embedded was also
an enriching element.
The model was to be no larger than 200x200x300 mm and in
this case paper, card, balsawood and plaster were prohibited.
A demand was made for the highest standards of craftsman-
ship with the priority being on the communication of spatial
ideas in preference to privilege the appearance of the model.
(CLOCKWISE FROM TOP LEFT)
KATIE COLLINS CATHERINE JONES JONATHAN ONG ANCHALEE SROISON
BRIEF #5
For this final brief students were required to model the idea
of home. This was to be achieved by contemplating what the
idea of home meant both to themselves and in a more generic
sense.
Students were asked to consider what minimum set of
elements was necessary for somewhere to feel like ‘home’ to
them; what were the things, relationships, characteristics or
attitudes they needed to establish or find in order to create
home for them? How universal were these and did they vary
with different cultures and age groups?
They were asked whether one could generalise the concept
‘home’ from personal experiences to a concept that would be
recognizable and of value to other people.
Considering the project was located in an Interior Design
program students were expected to deal with those aspects of
‘home’ that fell within the realm of Interior Design.
(CLOCKWISE FROM TOP LEFT)
VAUGHAN HOWARD LAUREN GOODMAN MELANIE MURACA
(CLOCKWISE FROM TOP LEFT)
KATIE COLLINS CATHERINE JONES ANCHALEE SROISON MYVANWY PURWO
an inquiry into researching through the designing-making
of a model. The voyage began by forming a Plasticine mould
for a papier-mâchè shell roughly in the shape of half of the
back of a cello – certainly enough for it to be recognisable
as a cello or violin. I had the idea of this being raised on
a frame and sheltering whatever grew beneath it. What
developed below the cello was a three-element bridge
sloping up to an elevated raked gravel garden held in what
might be a timber boat hull with the plan shape of concert
grand piano. This was made from wood found in a street skip.
This melding of hull, Japanese (or possibly Parisian) gravel and
piano hopefully calls for questioning on the part of a viewer
and a need to resolve the combination produced through
conflation. There is a fourth element: sound waves propagate
through the gravel – perhaps as a result of performance
on the piano.
The characteristics of the bridge are derived from the
remembrance of Scottish castle drawbridges with hints
of other bridges that raise or open as in Amsterdam and
of working cranes such as those used on container wharves.
The three timber bridge sections were also influenced
PETER DOWNTON
This is a tale of two models. Both are driven by ideas, but the
ways in which these ideas were given form and the relations
between form and ideas, differed instructively in the two
cases. The model making was set up intentionally to inquire
into the differing relations the two approaches would entail.
An account of the explorations and the findings is offered here.
The two models are part of a series of ‘Epistemological
Pavilions’ that I have made since 1996 to investigate aspects
of designing and making. Number 11 in the series, Music
Bridge: a chamber of iterative interpretations utilises forms
derived from items involved in the production of music, while
number 12, The Pilgrim Temple of Canonic Desires, investigates
re-use by employing elements of various works of architecture.
Aspects of the processes of translation and transformation
can be ascertained in both instances by following the paths
of ideas as they became physical form.
MUSIC BRIDGE: A CHAMBER OF ITERATIVE INTERPRETATIONS
The site for this model is a 270mm length of Stegbar cedar
window-sill. It takes a base for a window as the base of
by Mark Goulthorpe’s bronze hearth in the Haddad apartment,
Paris, 2001.1 The mechanisms for the bridge are predominantly
made from parts employed in hard disks – items inevitably
involved in the recording, reproduction and performance
of music. There are also plugs, pieces from within hard drives,
and brackets for memory on motherboards.
In an early mock-up, the cello form sat beside a skillion-roofed
shed. This idea persisted, but the initial shed was abandoned
as at odds with the more unusual things happening in the
model as it formed. Under the influence of images by Bernd
and Milla Bechers this part became most like an industrial
hopper as I worked on it in mock-up and final materials.
Its colouring and surface hopefully suggests a hint of signal
boxes by Herzog and de Meuron. This is one of the forms
with connections to architectural ideas, or ideas drawn from
the physical environment.
The elements of the piece were not selected or formed
in the order described above. I had various, partially-
made parts and assorted possibilities in mind and sought
commonalities, threads of integrative ideas that could
be characterised as tying them together. My explorations
FROM IDEAS TO MODELS: AN INTROSPECTIVE REPORT
17
PETER DOWNTON MUSIC BRIDGE: A CHAMBER OF ITERATIVE INTERPRETATIONS
led to music becoming the principle idea that linked them.
As this idea became more certain, the search for ways of
transforming music ideas into forms for this pavilion gained
focus. The discovery of new, music-related, ideas led to
physical expressions of a fairly literal kind; a model-making
idea sometimes began a connective chain to a musical idea by
filling in gaps in the music theme. Likewise, the music theme
made sense of some ill-formed modelling notions. Ideas about
music and modelling shaped one another. The process was
iterative. The forms are fairly direct translations from music to
architecture – even when the music form is used in unusual
ways or compounded by cross-pollinations as in the piano.
If a more abstract approach to music had been employed
the outcome would have been entirely different. For instance,
suppose I had attempted to map a physical form onto
a sonata form, I would have had to find physical analogues
for the musical ideas of development, recapitulation, keys
and thematic material – a much more difficult task than
the re-use of shapes and components. Where can such
analogues be sought? What are the grounds for arguing
that a physical form in some way equates with a musical
form? Against what criteria can the success of such
mappings be judged?
THE PILGRIM TEMPLE OF CANONIC DESIRES
The other 250mm of the remnant window-sill had to be used.
The first idea mocked-up was for a small pavilion sitting before
a sloping deformed oval platform with no obvious derivation
other than previous shapes I had used in other models. In its
second iteration a hole was cut in the platform for a tower
to rise through. Perhaps this tower idea was a precursor
of those that were later built. Pavilion 12 began to take on
the theme of re-use when I decided to replace the initial shape
with most of the roof plan of La Chapelle-Notre-Dame-du-
Haut at Ronchamp by Le Corbusier (1950-1955) used as a floor.
There was no theoretical rationale for this. The idea of using
the plan of an existing building led to a very short mental
search that resulted in trialing this choice and assessing it
as worth pursuing. My version of this plan displays both
bending and mild warping – an exaggerated version of the
sloped floor of the actual building. A level platform leading
to it is sheltered by a roof derived from any of a number
of houses by Frank Lloyd Wright – the only idea from the first
mock-up to survive to completion. (Wright’s houses that utilise
this roof form and pitch include the Ward Willits House (1901),
the Frederick Robie House (1906), the Avery Coonley House
(1907), Taliesin (1911) and the Harry Adams House (1913).)
The intentional referencing of these made only minute
difference to the form originally formed in card.
With these two forms in place, the search for other
useful building blocks began. The pavilion is predominantly
a compilation. I explored the idea of using a plan of Francesco
Borromini’s San Carlo Alle Quattro Fontane (1638) chapel
by adding it above the sloping floor, but concluded that
a greater sense of interiority could be attained by letting
it into the Ronchamp-based platform and having its sixteen
pilasters rise from there. These pilasters transformed into
columns made of clear Perspex reminiscent of the glass
columns of the Paradiso Hall of Terragni’s Danteum project
of three hundred years later. This was a translation of a
translation as the Danteum is a rich re-working of the poetry
of Dante into an architectural project.2 Entirely by coincidence,
as far as I know, sixteen columns also support the roof at
Ronchamp; there are twice the number in the Paradiso room,
plus one in its entry. My pavilion scheme had acquired
a magic number. A reversed, bent and beaten metal version
of the Ronchamp roof plan, punctured by a selection of the
windows from that building’s south wall, hangs above the
Perspex columns, as they intentionally fail (by various amounts)
to touch the roof. Positioned where the towers at Ronchamp
occur, there are two brass-framed towers, one of which
is structurally irrational. Proportionally, the height of the
larger one is appropriate for the size of the plan; otherwise
they are probably beyond what could be reasonably considered
a transformation, as they are frame rather than mass
construction and their forms are dissimilar to the originals.
The final major element is a re-working of the original scheme
(rather than using the simpler built-version) of a folly at Osaka
by Morphosis.3 On the towers and on extensions of the folly,
there are cranes – again made from hard drive components.
The two roofs hang from the cranes.
PETER DOWNTON MUSIC BRIDGE: A CHAMBER OF ITERACTIVE INTERPRETATIONS
PETER DOWNTON MUSIC BRIDGE: A CHAMBER OF ITERATIVE INTERPRETATIONS
PETER DOWNTON THE PILGRIM TEMPLE OF CANONIC DESIRES
The common threads among these diverse architectural
elements are membership of the canon of architecture
for at least some of them and their selection here by me.
The chosen works share little in the way of stylistic, formal
or theoretical concerns. These were not their grounds for
choice – rather they were selected from my repertoire of
known works on the basis of their formal usefulness. They
have been coerced into contributing to a new work – a viewer
may judge how successfully the collection, or sampling, forms
a whole. For me this whole came to be about producing
a piece concerning the idea of canonic works as metaphoric
temples, places of pilgrimage in both physical and intellectual
landscapes. Although bringing them together makes a new
entity, no new relationships between the parts is necessarily
elucidated simply through juxtaposition or conflation. Here,
I wanted to inflame the desires that architectural pilgrims
harbour to visit such canonic temples and begin a debate
about the translating entailed by taking elements
of architecture and re-using them.
The originals are more-or-less able to be recognised even
though there are varying degrees of abstraction and mutation.
Number might be preserved while the construction materials
and colours vary. Elsewhere, number, position and proportional
size are preserved, but not form or materials. Selection must
be carefully judged – aspects require an appropriate degree
of inclusion and maintenance if recognition of the original is
to be possible. (From the limited tests conducted, it seems
that the roof plan shape of Ronchamp can be recognised by
architects; presumably others will need greater numbers of
clues, or will need it fully explained.) The maker has to evaluate
how much of the original must be maintained, and in what
way, to allow recognition – if this is desired. Clearly, an original
can be used for the designer-maker’s own purposes and, in
this case, it may not be of concern if it is recognised or not.
Finally, someone viewing the piece may discern an unintended
allusion. The selections, substitutions and preservations that
are intentionally made, parallel translations of texts between
languages. Here, the translator may endeavour to address
the alteration of a cultural context and a set of meanings
surrounding the text and then offer a parallel rendering
in another language and culture rather than give simple
substitutions for the words in the original. This results in
a new work possibly extending the original.
FROM IDEA TO PHYSICAL FORM
In the two pavilion models, processes of translation and
transformation can both be seen; on the one hand a certain
stability of ideas from original to new work is discernable,
and on the other, change, evolution and alteration. These
ideas and elements are treated like ingredients in a brew
requiring combination, appropriate mixing and a period
of fermentation to achieve something beyond the original
parts. While there is no recipe, there is constant judgement
on the part of the designer-maker – constant evaluations lead
to additions, decisions to go no farther in a particular direction
and even decisions to retreat.
The Music Bridge pavilion deals mostly with ideas that are not
architectural and attempts to make something architectural
from them, while in The Pilgrim Temple of Canonic Desires
nearly all the informing ideas derive from examples
of architecture. In this second case, as discussed above,
the puzzle is to maintain and/or alter existing architectural
ideas and forms. In the first case there is a mixture. One
clearly musical shape is used – a cello. Similarly, a somewhat
transformed piano shape is highly legible, but is then subjected
to strategies likely to confuse an overly literal reading. The use
of computer parts and claims of their involvement in music
are less literal; their use as mechanical elements in the piece
involves further abstraction.
The overall form is not strongly shaped by the informing ideas
in either of the pavilions. In both there are parts that are not
derived from the idea set for the piece; they are a separate set
involved in composing the whole or contributing something
to the idea of a pavilion that could potentially be occupied –
a ramp or a seat, for instance. Overall there are decisions about
materials and colours that are not driven by the informing
ideas, but are drawn from the interests and tastes of the
maker-designer. These contribute to each work being a whole
and to them each fitting into a set of works formed from
my prior pavilion pieces. Additions, or choices, such as these
PETER DOWNTON THE PILGRIM TEMPLE OF CANONIC DESIRES
cannot be avoided or denied; there is no possibility of a direct
transformation of an idea into an architectural form without
such interventions.
How does an idea become a physical form? I suggest above
that translation and transformation are involved. In fact,
dictionary browsing suggests a number of concepts labelled
by words with the prefix ‘trans-’. It is the work we make
the prefix do that seems significant. It suggests crossing
something, moving through and changing from one state
to another. As well as translation and transformation,
we can call on transposition, transferral, transportation,
transcendence and transmogrification as descriptors to
illuminate the migratory passage from idea to model. Each
term can contribute something, but not one of them is entirely
convincing when operating alone. Two that deserve a little
elaboration are ‘transposition’ and ‘transmogrification’.
The first has similar senses in a number of fields and involves
transfer of the original to another position – a change of key
in music, the re-positioning of a number in an array or in an
equation in maths, or the transfer of a DNA segment
to a different position in a chromosome in a biological use.
In the case of the models, a re-positioning is also apparent,
but this is a change of system or context, not a change
contained entirely within one system such as these examples
suggest. Transmogrification also entails an alteration – in this
case within the thing itself, as it is a change in the appearance
or form of something. Moving from idea to form, as examined
here, requires crossing from the realm of ideas to that of
things. Although both ideas and models can be understood
as human constructs, they display sufficient differences to be
characterised as separate systems. We can paint the move from
idea to physical model as being examined in one system and
made in a new form in another system; there is a change of
system, not simply a change within one system, or a change
within one element of a system. Although there is beguiling
resonance with various concepts labelled with the prefix
‘trans-‘, the idea of translation seems to best parallel the
processes that have been described. The way in which
the translator has an idea that might ‘translate’ the original
in a new system is not much illuminated, however; the slower
process of evaluating and perhaps accepting the suggestion
is more obviously amenable to scrutiny and less reliant
on the apparently magical. Evaluation also requires ideas
such as ‘testing’, ideas underpinning means and methods
of testing, and ideas of making – a rich swirling of ideas
of differing types around the entity finally taking form
as a model.
1 Seen in an illustrated lecture given Mark Goulthorpe, 2004.
2 See Thomas Schumacher and Giorgio Ciucci, The Danteum, Princeton Architectural Press, Second English Edition, paperback, 2004.
3 Detailed drawings of the unbuilt version appear in Arata Isozaki, (with various contributions), Osaka Follies, London / Tokyo: Architectural Association / Workshop for Architecture and Urbanism, 1991.PETER DOWNTON
THE PILGRIM TEMPLE OF CANONIC DESIRES
year interior design students titled ‘Manual Ideas’. The specific
aim of the studio was to investigate the modelling of ideas
through manual means as opposed to the modelling and
communication of specific designs. This paper discusses two
objects produced in response to these concerns.
IDEAS OF MAKING: REDUCTION
The two objects employ two diametrically opposite ideas
of making, those of reduction and those of assemblage.
In the first instance the idea of the process of removal
or subtraction is employed. In this case the body of its
architecture has been sculpted from a block of balsawood.
Form is given to the block through the reduction of its material
content by the removal of its surface area. As a reaction to
previous work which was constantly being referred to as
reminiscent of ‘shell-like’ forms the body of this object was
worked to produce a ‘different kind’ of form. Although
a conscious effort was made to move away from the ‘shell-like’
forms there was no premeditated idea of what this sculpting
would ultimately result in. However it must be stated there
is always an abiding idea of producing objects that carry with
ANDREA MINA
INTRODUCTION
Small scaled objects and manual modelling are at the core
of my research which is being undertaken through a doctorate
which at present has as its working title ‘Intimate Immensities;
miniatures, an interior architecture’.
The central focus of this research investigates the manual
making of small scale objects which for the ease of this
discussion may be referred to as miniatures. However these
objects do not refer to a larger scaled version of something
else nor do they reference any particular precedent. They are
‘things’ unto themselves and are made at a scale which is in
fact one is to one. In this sense it is preferable to refer to them
as objects rather than as models as the reference to models
would have the implication they are smaller scaled versions
being used to represent something else which would be
manifest at a larger scale.
This discussion is made more complex by virtue of the fact
that in this particular instance the objects were used to run
a parallel investigation to that undertaken in the design studio
offered together with Peter Downton for second and third
GIVING FORM TO IDEAS
them the resonances of architectural form. As it transpired
the form engaged the ideas of a continuous surface defined
by compound curvatures which are governed by symmetry
about the vertical axis. The idea of achieving compound
curves is a logical extension of the manual manipulation of the
material and a bodily desire for a close and comfortable fit of
the object into the palm of the hand during its manipulation.
Sharp edges are naturally uncomfortable in one’s grip and
induce unnecessary bodily distractions during this process of
making. Two ‘tower-like’ extensions emerged as a result of
introducing a further curved negative form which was achieved
by removing a central portion of the apex of the object.
As my research is also concerned with ideas of the production
of interior space the next step involved the removal of interior
material from its containing form. The process of removal
to produce interior space engages with an abiding idea that
architecture has as one of its most fundamental principles
the making of space for human occupation. Solid form simply
cannot satisfy this. There are pervading simple rules which
govern this process of removal. First is a desire to work the
material to the finest thicknesses possible especially at all
24
ANDREA MINA OBJECT #1
exposed edges because it is at these areas that thicknesses
are perceived. This is in order to achieve a material thickness
which is in keeping with the small scale at which the objects
are made. The process is in turn governed by removing as
much material as possible up until that point of rupture when
the surface of the form dissolves through lack of its material
substance. To my mind this ultimate moment of resistance
produces openings which have a sense of authenticity.
However in this case there was a preconceived idea of
producing an opening which ran the full height of the object
in order to achieve a front elevation for the object whilst also
fully exposing the interior space of the containing architectural
form. For ease of the discussion this object will be referred
to as Object #1.
IDEAS OF MAKING: ASSEMBLAGE
In contrast to object #1, object #2 has been made through
the assembly of parts. In this case the object slowly evolves
through the accumulation of parts which are assembled in
response to what has preceded their inclusion. The inference
here is there are no preconceptions regarding the form that
is to evolve other than a knowledge something will emerge
through careful engagement and refined sensibilities.
This method of making bears its genesis in the habit
of doodling which I have nurtured over the past forty years.
My obsessive wanderings with pen on paper have developed
into a three dimensional doodling which involves making
a ‘mark’ and responding in some manner to the initial and
subsequent actions. This type of drawing has no embedded
narrative and serves no purpose other than to satisfy an innate
craving to put pen to paper during moments of reflection
or during times of the many excruciating meetings which
are part of any professional life. Experience has taught me
the most successful doodles are those whose beginnings are
in response to a given condition whether it is a smudge of ink
or crease or tear in the surface of the paper. This may be an
answer to the dilemma of the artist confronted by the tyranny
of a blank canvass – how and where to begin?
In essence my three dimensional doodling is governed
by a sense of composition whether it is achieved through
symmetrical or asymmetrical balance. Rhythm is achieved
through the repeated use of particular elements which are
not necessarily exactly the same in size or shape. Contrasts
are achieved through the juxtaposition of different and at
times opposing materials, for example transparency against
opaqueness, robustness against flimsiness. Scalar shifts
between elements are used to induce not only contrast
but to enhance a sense of interest. Differing areas of density
further add to a sense of interest. Sometimes a conscious
effort is made to obscure the clarity of detail in order
to produce textured surfaces with the hope of affecting
haptic viewing.
Object #2 had its beginnings with my fascination in the
structure and beauty of cicada wings. The first move was
to select a wing that basically corresponded in size to that
of the size of the object I was contemplating together with
the decision this would be a tower of sorts. This contemplation
produces a fuzzy mental image which is void of detail and
loose enough to accommodate the myriad of opportunities
which arise during the making. Keeping in mind the working
title of my PhD and the reference to miniatures I have been
endeavouring to make smaller and smaller objects whilst still
retaining the characteristics of the initial pieces which are
possibly between five to ten times the sizes of the piece I had
in mind. With a little poetic licence it may be envisaged I am in
effect producing miniature scaled versions of the characteristics
of the initial body of work.
Having selected the most appropriate wing the objective now
became to undermine the visual reading of the object as wing
in order to move ‘it’ more towards a reading of an architectural
element. This was achieved by adding a skeletal truss-like
structure made from cactus spikes to one face of the wing
upon which pieces of iridescently coloured butterfly wings
were overlaid. The idea of using iridescent coloured wings
was to achieve surprise and wonder through the startling
effect the iridescence has through the visual movement and
changes that take place as the angle at which they are seen
changes. From one angle there appears to be a dull surface
behind the transparency of the wing which suddenly bursts
into an electric blue as one changes position about the object. ANDREA MINA OBJECT #1
At this point a series of small flat cuttlefish-shell pieces were
glued to both surfaces together with cactus-spike supporting
structures in an effort to evoke the idea of planes for
occupation and to further undermine the visual reading
of wing
With the wing established as a prime element efforts were
now made to hold the piece in a vertical position. This required
the use of a smaller section of wing located at right angles
to the main element and again positioned vertically. Cactus
spikes were again used to connect the pieces. As a response
to the curvature of the base of the wings I decided to complete
a tripartite composition by introducing a third but angled
wing thus forming the base of the tower and enclosing what
I imagined to be a relatively enormous civic space. A decision
was made to angle the placement of this element in an
effort to provide a sense of visual movement from the base
up towards the apex. In contrast to the prime element this
structure is completely transparent thus providing visual
access to the enclosed space.
Because the production of interior space is one of the
fundamental ideas driving the making of these objects care
is taken to reveal these spaces and to not obscure the interiors
by completely enclosing space with opaque materials. Once
the object could stand upright without external support other
smaller wings and more cuttlefish shell plates were attached
at various points to this structure. At this point vertically
positioned cactus spine was introduced to induce the visual
perception of columns supporting these plates. A decision
was made to introduce a number of longer red cactus-spikes
with the aim of reinforcing the vertical whilst simultaneously
complementing the vertical green stripes contained within the
cicada wings. In this manner the composition was built
up to achieve the desired density; the measurement of which
is determined by what appears to satisfy my sensibilities.
Much in a similar manner to my doodles I decided the
iridescent colour needed to appear in other areas of the
composition. This resulted in the insertion of a prefabricated
rectilinear container bound by horizontally placed
cactus-spikes at the top of the tower. This shape was
intended as a contrast to the curved wing forms at the base
of the tower, the horizontal spikes meant as demarcations
of possible floor plates.
Perhaps the most perplexing aspect of making through
assemblage is in achieving that point of resistance which
signals completion. Unlike making through reduction and
its companion moments of rupture assemblage may proceed
unabated. In this instance closure was achieved through
an abatement in my patience with and interest in the object.
With the wing established as a prime element efforts were
now made to hold the piece in a vertical position. This required
the use of a smaller section of wing located at right angles
to the main element and again positioned vertically. Cactus
spikes were again used to connect the pieces. As a response
to the curvature of the base of the wings I decided to complete
a tripartite composition by introducing a third but angled
wing thus forming the base of the tower and enclosing what
I imagined to be a relatively enormous civic space. A decision
ANDREA MINA OBJECT #2
was made to angle the placement of this element in an
effort to provide a sense of visual movement from the base
up towards the apex. In contrast to the prime element this
structure is completely transparent thus providing visual access
to the enclosed space.
Because the production of interior space is one of the
fundamental ideas driving the making of these objects care
is taken to reveal these spaces and to not obscure the interiors
by completely enclosing space with opaque materials. Once
the object could stand upright without external support other
smaller wings and more cuttlefish shell plates were attached
at various points to this structure. At this point vertically
positioned cactus spine was introduced to induce the visual
perception of columns supporting these plates. A decision
was made to introduce a number of longer red cactus-spikes
with the aim of reinforcing the vertical whilst simultaneously
complementing the vertical green stripes contained within
the cicada wings. In this manner the composition was built
up to achieve the desired density; the measurement of which
is determined by what appears to satisfy my sensibilities.
Much in a similar manner to my doodles I decided the
iridescent colour needed to appear in other areas of the
composition. This resulted in the insertion of a prefabricated
rectilinear container bound by horizontally placed cactus-
spikes at the top of the tower. This shape was intended
as a contrast to the curved wing forms at the base of the
tower, the horizontal spikes meant as demarcations of
possible floor plates.
Perhaps the most perplexing aspect of making through
assemblage is in achieving that point of resistance which
signals completion. Unlike making through reduction and
its companion moments of rupture assemblage may proceed
unabated. In this instance closure was achieved through
an abatement in my patience with and interest in the object.
IDEAS OF EMPTINESS AND DECORATION
As previously mentioned the form of object #1 was consciously
worked to produce a shape unlike an egg form. Subsequent
to the removal of its interior material I was struck by the idea
of emptiness and the vast potential inherent in void space.
Contrary to the idea of void space being empty this space
is in effect charged with the potential of its futures and thus
becomes a site for engagement and the opportunity for
new manufactured interventions. However this potential is
immediately dissipated once any actions are taken to materially
occupy this space. Material occupation determines a specific
condition within the void hence limiting future options for
interventions within the space.
With this in mind I determined to intervene in the least possible
intrusive manner in an attempt to maintain the charged nature
of this void interior space. My concern now became how best
to fill interior space whilst maintaining its characteristics of
ANDREA MINA OBJECT #1
emptiness without limiting its potential for future occupations.
One possible course of action was to address the enclosing
surfaces which define this void space. By only addressing
the surface without altering its form the void remains intact
through the maintenance of its volumetric integrity.
To achieve this status quo I decided to employ the techniques
of decoration, that most ancient of all artistic practices.
It has often been quoted that Architecture is ‘the mother’
of all arts. One need only contemplate the practices of
prehistoric populations decorating the surfaces of caves to
appreciate the fallacy of this of this quotation. In effect we
may consider Decoration to be ‘the mother’ of all arts.
Considering the aforementioned I decided to appliquè butterfly
wings onto the enclosing surfaces of the void space. This was
an appropriate strategy given the cave-like appearances of this
void. The choice of which wings to use was influenced by their
patterning and not so much by their colourations. Portions
of wings with simple dot and circular patterns were selected
for their simplicity and the possible interpretations of the dot
and circle as prehistoric and universal symbols. Their different
shades of brown were an appropriate fit against the light shade
of brown of the balsawood in that there was no discordant
visual relationship between surface and decoration.
A contrasting approach was adopted with the decoration
of the external surface of the object. In this case an effort
was made to use colour to highlight a specific area on the
surface of the object for the purpose of subverting the visual
apprehension of the shape of that area. To this end the semi-
circular concaved shaped area at the top of the object was
covered with strips of iridescent coloured butterfly wings.
The idea was to exploit the strength of this vivid magical
colouring in conjunction with the resulting striped patterning
in the hope for the vivid colour to be visually projected out
from its defining surface thereby undermining the concavity
of the surface. It is contestable whether this idea has been
entirely successful in its execution, however the affective
qualities of iridescence add further dimensions of surprise
and delight when encountering the object.
IDEAS OF STITCHING
I began to apprehend anthropomorphic qualities in the final
form of object #1 with the emerging dominant image being
that of a headless human torso; this possibly due to the
curved symmetrical nature of the form, its tapering shape
from ‘shoulders to waist’ and the image of shoulder blades
manifest by the concave semi-circular excavation at its apex.
Not being comfortable with this image, especially the idea of
an opened and empty medical cadaver, I decided to intervene
through the idea of stitching the surfaces together along the
length of its continuous vertical opening; a redemptive gesture
of healing intended to secure the interior of the form by
intimating the making whole of its ruptured surface.
To this end I introduced white coloured cat hair to span the
gap between surfaces with the hope their slightness, stiffness
and straightness would elicit visual readings of tension. It was
never my intention to produce an overt medical reading of
stitching but to rather work with the word as a verb describing
the process of joining together. As a result the hairs were
cut short both in keeping with the scale of the object and
for the purpose of being subtle in the communication of my
idea. Consequently this necessitated joining the hairs across
the breadth of the opening whilst also providing a degree of
structural stability to the hairs and joints during this process
ANDREA MINA OBJECT #1
of fabrication. Despite the fact of their relative stiffness it is no
easy task to keep the end of a very fine piece of hair stationery
in an exact spot in space for long enough to join another piece
to it at exactly the correct spot.. The fundamental principles
of triangulation were employed to provide stability which in
turn produced visual readings of a type of trussed structure
in keeping with the architectural nature of the object.
Small pieces of red sea-urchin spine were used to locate the
points of connection between the hairs and the object’s
surface. In a similar manner more of the domed ends of
the spines were used to articulate the points of connection
between the hairs with the added intention of encouraging
visual movement across this complex surface.
IDEAS OF LIGHTNESS
An idea of lightness was central to my thinking throughout
the making of object #2. This was obviously influenced by the
decision to work with cicada wings however it also became
a guiding principle against which decisions could be made.
The transparency of the wings together with their inherent
fragile characteristics provided an immediate sense of lightness.
This metaphor was complimented and made more complex
through the combination of cicada wings with iridescent
coloured butterfly wings. Both wing types have an immediate
and direct connection with flight thereby establishing
an association with air and its evocation of lightness;
as light as air.
Once one apprehends the iridescent colouring of the butterfly
wings, for a nanosecond the effect of shimmer and sparkle has
the propensity to project itself beyond the surface of its being.
Lightness is thus manifest through this visual radiation and its
sense of upliftment.
The manner in which the object touches the ground was
limited to the minimum number of points. This was further
exacerbated through the curvature of the wings effectively
limiting contact in each to a single point thus allowing
the object to stand above its ground plane. This is unlike
object #1 which is firmly grounded by the continuous
contact between base and ground plane.
Perhaps the idea of lightness is best manifest through
the diminutive size of the object and its negligible weight.
ANDREA MINA OBJECT #2
ANDREA MINA OBJECT #2
a concept into a design, how do we recognise the optimum
‘stopping point’, and how do we know when we have gone
off beam? This quest for poise highlighted design as a process
rather than celebrating any particular designed outcome.
Students worked on individual projects for half the semester,
and collectively for the remainder.
MODELLING CONCEPTS
Having observed an apparent predilection for representational
modelling at the first Homo Faber exhibition held in June
2006, we were interested in learning a little more about the
status of the concept, and modelling concepts. Was practice
shy about revealing its working or ‘dog’ models in a public
forum, favouring more finished outcomes? Were practitioners
so experienced in ideation that they could leapfrog over
an exhausting process that can keep students busy for the
majority of the semester? Were students more shy of making
the commitments that practitioners routinely make in nurturing
ideas through to completed building, or simply more indulgent
through not having more capital-driven impediments?
As a set of questions, answers could not be sought in
MARK BURRY
The ‘Poise Studio’ ran for the first semester of 2007 and
involved students from the Architecture, Fashion, Industrial
Design, Communication Design, and Landscape Architecture
programs, in broadly equal numbers. The studio had several
objectives. First and foremost it was an investigation into
the status of the concept as part of the design process,
and especially the role of the model in spatially articulating
concepts both from a view of aiding the individual’s singular
thought processes through to their desire to communicate
their design intentions to others. Secondly, the studio looked at
how conceptual 3D design differed, if at all, between related
and less obviously related design disciplines. Thirdly the studio
looked for benefits in a transdisciplinary approach to design
development, and the status of ‘authorship’ in that regard.
There were two objectives to the studio: one abstract,
and one concrete. The concrete objective was to work
around the theme of the politics of water – by the end
of the studio, mixed discipline groups had worked together
through projects at the scale of buildings on, near and / or
about water. The abstract theme was also the driver: poise.
How many iterations might be necessary in order to mature
a single studio, but at least we could thoroughly investigate
ideation, conceptualisation, and design development
in a time frame that a typical architectural practice cannot
routinely afford. Furthermore, by assembling a diverse group
of designers, initially looking at more abstract themes such
as ‘poise’ and ‘self’ and ‘water’ rather than ‘library’
and ‘hospital’, we could look across disciplines and assess
the role of conceptualisation more generally without the
influence of ‘partisan contaminants’ that an architectural
(or any other design discipline) perspective would most likely
bring to the mix.
Mark Burry, Alison Fairley, Juliette Peers formed a team
and we ran the studio together seeking collaboration from
the participating disciplines for the several design reviews
that punctuated the semester. The studio ran in a progressive
mode starting with individual enquiry and leading steadily to
transdisciplinary group work. In terms of a thematic, students
began with an introspective focus to their design research
through to working in groups with an imaginary clients in
mind, and developing designs for projects in teams within
which the project’s original designer was not included.
POISE: AN OVERVIEW
32
DAVID DANA WATER MODEL
The following account documents the studio from start
to finish, and the accompanying images give voice
to the outcome.
PROJECT 1: PERSONAL REAL ESTATE
How best to get a group of twenty four students from
5 distinct disciplines to meld together into young and
enthusiastic groups of committed design researchers?
The first project was designed as an ‘ice-breaker’: each
student was asked to create a vision/self portrait of “yourself
through the metaphor of your design discipline/training”.
Using a 150mm square footprint, each student produced a 3D
tableau that provided an insight into his or her world, personal
history and preoccupations. At the end of the week, each
model was presented by its maker to the rest of the class
of which at least 80% would have been ‘foreign’ to them
through virtue of having come from other disciplines.
The purpose of the first project in terms of pedagogy was
to “learn something of ideas and aesthetic priorities of
everyone in the class, see a variety of different approaches
to creating models and prototypes, combine individual
pieces of design work into a whole, and explore context
and interaction of different models as a ‘studio cityscape’
is constructed”.
PROJECT 2: SPATIALISING WATER
Moving from a purely personal take on the world, students
moved to a more abstract theme: water, and the politics
that go with it. They had three weeks to produce a model
that captured their take on water as an element, as a subject
literary or otherwise, as a polemic, and as a life force. Their
assignment in detail was as follows:
‘Students should think about the politics of water not
only as an environmental issue but as a social, cultural and
artistic concern. The topic is wide and you are not expected
to become an expert in the field. Perhaps you could think
about such things as water sourcing and collection, disposal
and recycling, irrigation and garden sprays, waste run
off and water borne pollutants, salination and drainage.
Water plays a part in many aspects of our lives from health
to recreation. Yet water has strong symbolic and poetic
references as well as unique physical characteristics. Our
traditional understanding of boundaries, borders and edges
as contained and fixed might be challenged by addressing
and considering water’s characteristic flow and fluidity. What
insight and hints can water offer to our understanding of
practice and the design process? This assignment will provide
an important initial phase which will form a basic foundation
to be developed in the latter stages of the studio.
A 5 minute (maximum) presentation of your research into
water, your research can be on anything to do with water.
It should reflect your interests in the topic and will form
the basis for the rest of your semester. The presentation
should be in either a PDF or PowerPoint presentation.
You can include images, movies, research sourced from
the Internet (YouTube, Flickr etc.) Note: Everyone will be
heading for Wikipedia first, so do think twice before basing
your research on the water article…
Model making: the student will; represent quality of water
by providing a digital and or physical model representing
an aspect of water and its many functions and contexts.
You may address water in a number of ways such as
its gaseous, liquid or solid state; high speed imaging;
magnification; surface properties; subsurface currents,
splash patterns etc. You can develop your idea within the
boundaries and language of your own discipline – please
support your model with a visual diary of working sketches
and idea development – material can be posted on the
‘Poise’ wiki as well
Position your thinking relative to water in any respect,
for example, sourcing treatment and supply, surface tension.
Please do this by providing a short written statement
evidenced by researched material. (800-1200 words) -
and provide a comprehensive list of source materials that
you consulted
While certain themes emerged as common concerns, each
presentation was uniquely informative, and provided an
extraordinary array of ideas and sensibilities sponsored from
a single word subject.
TRAZ POON TRANSFORMABLE WATER PONCHO
PROJECT 3: WATER BY DESIGN
Moving from concept, students migrated to forming projects
individually based on their research into water.
Their tasks were formulated as follows.
‘Taking the driving narrative content as water:
‘make visible and explore in 3-D design-based thinking issues
around the process of design itself.
• Write their own brief, it should be within your own
discipline but with thought to possible interaction and
connections with the other disciplines
• Brief and resulting design should springboard from your
original research into water
• Brief and resulting design should respond to the content
of your original research and place it in a context relevant
to your discipline
• The design outcome should find a state of poise on the
border between concept and design. (i.e. Designs should
not be fully realised, or finished)
• The design project should address questions that we are
already discussing around design and its processes
• The project should explore the role of decision making
and judgement in designing
• The project should explore the stopping point or the
tipping point in the design process.
Students to work in any medium, virtual or physical, and in
any combination. The outcomes should follow the stipulation
of the brief as they have been set out in conjunction with
your home discipline. The level of finish and the format of
the outcome
in your home discipline should be adhered to.
Back up documentation: Throughout this second project – as well as producing
a model - students will record, document and map their
design process in a design diary – sketches, research,
and reflections, which can be physical or virtual (wiki-based).
The visual representation will capture a critical aspect of the
project and be used to demonstrate the desired intention.
Support and preparatory material should be included as
textual back up and as charting the design process.’
Obviously with so diverse a group of students, at this stage
we invited them to work within their own areas of discipline
expertise. We made suggestions on how to proceed on that
basis as follows:
Prepare models (physical or virtual) that produce the
following:
1. Function / Program (what is it you’re designing. It should
connect with the concept of water in some way. This can
be VERY LATERAL)
2. Concept (what is driving the design, what is it you wish
to achieve with it, it should also connect with the concept
of water in some way)
3. Site (only applicable to Architecture and Landscape, but
the other designers might wish to have a site as well. The
site must be in the Greater Melbourne area and have some
connection to water.)
Architecture
Design an inhabitable building. The building must have a
use that relates to water, i.e. a water treatment plant, a
swimming pool, a water education centre. You must pick an
appropriate site that also has a close relationship with water
within the greater Melbourne area. Think about connections
your design could have to other disciplines, i.e. could it make
a fantastic chair, or landscape, or book if scaled down and
altered in small ways?
Landscape Design
Design a landscape. It can be of any size and any scope.
The landscape must be influenced, created, contain or inform
water. You must pick an appropriate site that also has a close
relationship with water within the greater Melbourne area.
Think about connections your design could have to other
disciplines, ie, could your contours inform a dress pattern,
or your design become inhabitable and turned into a
R’M’B
FLIPBOOK ANIMATIONbuilding
if altered in small ways?
Fashion
Design something that has connections to the body
and water. It should deal with materiality, i.e. surfaces,
membranes and materials that deal with water, either
keeping it out or keeping it in. Think about connections
your design could have to other disciplines, i.e. could your
patterns be scaled up and form
a building? Could your material choices also be used for
book coverings, could your outlines inform Landscapes?
Communication Design
Design something of your choosing that communicates water
in some way, i.e. a book, a series of catalogues, a way of
communicating an aspect of water to the public. This work
can push the boundaries of what these designs are supposed
to be, especially in the areas of scale and materiality. i.e. a
giant book, an underwater marketing campaign, a liquid
catalogue. Think of connections your design could have with
other disciplines i.e. Could your design inform textiles, could
your graphic
be embedded across a whole landscape?
Industrial Design
Design an object that has some relationship to water. It can
be of any size, scope, materiality and budget. i.e. an
umbrella, a water bottle, scuba gear. The design can push
the boundaries of what is possible or what is commonly
done i.e. a giant umbrella that shields 10 at a time. Think of
connections your design could have with other disciplines
i.e. Could your umbrella become a permanent feature of the
landscape,
a pavilion from rain? Could your bottle design inform the
shape of a piece of fashion?
PROJECT 4: TRANSDISCIPLINARY UNDERTAKING
For the final project, students came together in trans-
disciplinary groups. Five projects were selected from the pool
of more than twenty deemed most likely to afford design
teams challenges that reached-out to all their various discipline
strengths. Each team (in most cases) had no more than one
representative from each participating discipline. And each
team worked on a project without the benefit of the original
author, who was participating within a separate group on the
same basis. At the final review, each group presented their
projects fully to a suitably diverse range of critics. At no point
was it clear to the visitors who was who in relation to their core
discipline judging from the work itself.
CONCLUDING COMMENTS
Only tentative conclusions can be drawn at the time of writing,
as the project has only just finished. From the students’ point
of view, it was an outstanding success judging from the
feedback we received. The last three weeks of the semester
were characterised by night and day activity within the studio
space dedicated to the assignment with many of the students
prepared to work in areas that were beyond their experience
in terms of their previous learning experience. The results speak
for themselves: while finished projects some may well lack the
degree of polish that each discipline might assume to have
been an outcome were the studio dedicated to that discipline,
there is a different kind of maturity evident in the work.
As a research endeavour into the prominence of the concept
and its associated modelling, and the enrichment that working
POISE
PERSONAL REAL ESTATE
In the first exercise students in the School of Architecture
and Design together with students from the School of
Applied Communication created their personal stories
in a model format. The project brief asked students to use
typical materials and techniques associated their home
program. Apart from a maximum dimension of 150mm x
150mm for the base, there were no restrictions. Students
worked alone on their models and brought them into the class
where they were discussed by lecturers. For the final step the
models were assembled into a “city scape” to form a collective
group portrait. These personal models introduced students to
each other’s creative ideas and demonstrated many different
approaches to creating models and prototypes. Combining
individual pieces of design work into a larger entity launched
the process of cooperative sharing of ideas and skills.
(CLOCKWISE FROM TOP LEFT)
JESSE NEWSTADT CAITLIN SMOOKER BEN OLIVER
36
(CLOCKWISE FROM TOP LEFT)
TZE EK NG CAMILLA ZANZANAINI INGRID RIDDERVOLD ANDRIA SKOUMBRIDIS GREG TEAGUE DAVID DANA
(FROM LEFT TO RIGHT)
JARROD MANEVSKI PANLIKIT BOONYACHAI
POISE
SPATIALISING WATER
Water was the theme through which Poise studio members
explored model making, design development, and solving
the “stopping problem” of finding the right design solution
amongst multiple alternatives.
Students were asked to model water in digital and physical
formats. Water is a fertile source of design ideas. The physical
characteristics of water are unique. For instance, as a liquid,
it has unique surface properties, subsurface currents and
splash patterns. Water makes an impact on many aspects
of everyday life from health to recreation. Moreover, it has
an equally strong symbolic and poetic resonance. Current
popular opinion focuses on the political issues of water:
supply, wastage, shortage, recycling, disposal, pollution
and salination. The models developed by the students
represented such issues.
Water was not only a topic for research. The fluidity and
flow of water offered insights into the design process itself.
From their focus upon the nature of water, students began
to question certainties and broach the comfort zone of
familiar ideas.
The models of water were developed within the boundaries
and language of the students’ particular disciplines and
were supported with a visual diary of working sketches
and idea development.
(CLOCKWISE FROM TOP LEFT)
ANDRIA SKOUMBRIDIS PHIL SMITH JARROD MANEVSKI INGRID RIDDERVOLD
(CLOCKWISE FROM TOP LEFT)
CARLOS BUENO CAITLIN SMOOKER DAVID DANA TZE EK NG
(FROM LEFT TO RIGHT)
CAMILLA ZANZANAINI GREG TEAGUE
(FROM TOP TO BOTTOM)
JESSE NEWSTADT MICHAEL ASBOECK
POISE
THE FINAL ASSIGNMENT
The final assignment in Poise involved two tasks.
Firstly, students were required to develop the concepts
of another designer. Secondly, they were required to work
with designers from different disciplines working on a single
project. Students were asked to form themselves into teams
where every member came from a different program in RMIT.
Models were made in various scales, from reduced scales
to one-to-one detail. Working in different scales revealed
how changing the scale of a model impacts not only upon
its physical properties, but upon the information the model
communicates. Students were required to select the detail
of construction that suited each type of model, with particular
attention to how their choices affected the information value
of the model.
POISE
LECTURERS
Professor Mark Burry
Dr. Juliette Peers
Alison Fairley
PARTICIPANTS
DESERTLEAC
Lauren Gillard
Anette Gunstensen
Tze Ek Ng
Caitlin Smooker
KIDIAMI Michael Asboeck
Diane Baini
David Dana
Kin Li
JAC’T
Jesse Newstadt
Traz Poon
Andria Skoumbridis
Camilla Zanzanaini
R’M’B
Panlikit Boonyachai
Ricky Lau Hin Yau
Ben Oliver
GROUP ONE
Carlos Garcia Bueno
Ingrid Riddervold
Greg Teague
DIESES MOGEN
Julian Faelli
Jarrod Manevski
Timothy Derreck Massuger
Phillip Smith
DESERTLEAC CONSTRUCTION OF ‘POD’
DESERTLEAC
The Desert LEAC group are fashion student Anette Gunstensen,
communication design student Caitlin Smooker, landscape
architecture student Lauren Gillard and architecture student
Tze Ek Ng were assigned a project by architecture student
David Dana. He designed a community sports centre at
Docklands. The centre is embellished by a decorative motif
abstracted from the complex lines of turbulence and stasis that
can be measured in moving floodwaters. The group decided
that the dominant curving elongated forms created as the water
spread though the flood plain would sit better in the elevated
landscape of the Kings Domain than in the flat paved and
industrially degraded landscape of Docklands. They also felt
that the growing residential community around South
Melbourne City Road and the established community around
Domain Road needed a public library. Desert LEAC’s vision
is of a library that welcomes visitors— “an active … source
of inspiration. Libraries should be door-openers showing visitors
new ways of learning and experiencing”. The spaces in this new
library are warm and inviting. They include the moveable pods
for group study and a series of outdoor rooms with grass seats
echoing the flowing forms. The water patterns also reflect the
behaviour of the building’s users, media and staff—they form
different patterns and flows. Thus the centre’s public spaces are
flexible, easily transformed either temporarily and permanently
to respond to new patterns of use.
(CLOCKWISE FROM TOP LEFT)
PRELIMINARY CONCEPT MODEL POD CONCEPT MODEL FINAL 1:2 SCALE GRASS CHAIR MODEL (1200 X 900 X 500mm)
(FROM LEFT TO RIGHT)
FINAL 1:100 SCALE BALSA MODEL OF LIBRARY CLOSE-UP OF FOLDING ROOF CONCEPT MODEL
KIDIDAMI
The KididAmi group: landscape student on exchange from
Germany Michael Asboeck, landscape student Diane Baini,
communication design student Kin Li, and architect student
David Dana were assigned a project by communication design
student Camilla Zanzanaini, a large scale projection of words,
music and visual imagery intended to be shown on public
buildings or even large bodies of water, “beautiful, sensuous,
moving [projections] that make people stop and think about
the beauty of water”. The group took the basic concept
of large scale projections onto buildings and married it to
the proposed Centre for design at RMIT on the old CUB site.
The design centre was envisaged as a complex of multi-
functioned buildings for a variety of short term projects
that collectively formed a screen for multiple projections.
These projections can be curated as art or design events,
long or short term, or they can alter content in response to
movement and activities in the buildings at different times
of the day or deliver alternative, contemporary approaches
to signage and direction around the site, or even fuse these
varied functions. The buildings were laid out to suggest
a liquid flow of people through the slight from the slighter
higher North end to the south portal to the city, as streams
flow over rocks. Landscaping proactively emphasised sweeping,
water-like movement, and the lyricism of Zanzanaini’s fusing
of words, images and music around water. The models
drew upon the discipline practice of their makers including
traditional architectural layouts in cardboard and perspex
and a rich oeuvre of digital artworks, which were projected
onto the cardboard models and then filmed in a further layer
of model making. The governing narrative of the project
across all the media was creating a contemporary design
aesthetic matching the predicted future-looking quality
of the Centre for Design itself.
FINAL !:200 MODEL OF DESIGN CENTRE
EXPERIMENTING WITH PROJECTIONS ON CARDBOARD MODEL OF DESIGN CENTRE
(FROM LEFT TO RIGHT)
FINAL 1:1 SCALE MODEL OF ONE OF WALL PANELS 1:50 SCALE MODEL OF ONE BUILDING
R’M’B
BUBBLE ROOM ANIMATION INTRO REEL TO INTERACTIVE BIKE PARK
DIESES MOGEN
WORKING MODEL OF TURKISH BATHS: ATMOSPHERIC IMAGES
JAC’T (CLOCKWISE FROM TOP LEFT)
1:2 SCALE SECTION OF PIPE 1:200 SCALE MODEL OF TRANSPORT HUB PROFILE CIRCULATION MODEL
GROUP ONE
FINAL 1:200 SCALE MODEL OF UNDERGROUND STREET ART GALLERY
FIRST PROJECT WORKED ON BY STUDENTS AS INDIVIDUALS
“WHO ARE YOU ANYWAY…” THE MODEL IN A FACEBOOK ERA
Create a vision/self portrait of yourself through the metaphor
of your design discipline/training
Faced with a topic that was open and abstract and a group
of students of different disciplines, what would happen when
they were asked to make models, some for the first time during
their study at RMIT? The first presentation of work, two weeks
in from the start of class would give an indication of future
progress of the students as a collective organism and the
studio as a whole. Whilst architectural students were familiar
with a vocabulary of balsa wood and laser cut cardboard,
other students had not presented their ideas in a 3D format
before. Although the process was not fully alien to the
students as some form of provisional and experimental
productions are inherent to all the design disciplines
represented in Poise: “as a comm designer I am constantly
making models of a different type, prototypes maybe others
The last few days when we all spent crazy amounts of hours together, there was such a sense of family, if you needed something and another group had it there was no hesitation in handing it over.
Caitlin Smooker
Mark Burry has given an account of the Poise Studio,
its learning outcomes and its exercises in bringing students
together with the model and seeking some reflection
of the importance of modelling in the contemporary design
process. From a large oeuvre of documentary material and
from a range of observations of each week of the studio
here are some more intimate views of moments within the
studio focusing on models and the processes of design and
the academy.
would call them, but a mock up of a book, to play with size
shape and layout for example”. Likewise fashion students
mostly work on a one to one scale and for final assessment
produce finished objects rather than drafts; students’ work is
expected to be able to stand up to the rigours of the runway in
a show or competition. They also make use of toiles – a version
of a given set of pattern pieces in a plain cotton or other cheap
fabric – to test that the pattern does achieve in 3D what was
envisioned in 2D. The cheap and plain fabric allows for the
structure to read without extraneous embellishment and does
not waste expensive fabrics on proto-typing. Modelling and
testing practices from discipline to discipline had variations in
format and usage. Throughout the studio, the students began
to learn of each other’s processes.
The lecturers knew that the Poise experience was going
to be fruitful and valid when the first models were brought
in. They deployed a whole lexicon of the possible life of hand
skills in the current era, from sewing to carving. Concurrently
other students presented computer driven outcomes.
Materials employed range from homely substances or even
the scavenged and recycled, whilst other models were finely
JULIETTE PEERS
POISE DIARY: MOMENTS FROM THE STUDIO
53
finished. The physicality of the substances also ranged from the
solid wood and metal to fabric and paper. Narrative tone was
almost as equally varied from the factual to the playful, from
the intellectualizing to the expressionistic, from the extrovert
to the introspective. There was a shared theme but infinite
variations of approach and vocabulary
The student group laid on the table models of eloquence,
beauty and sometimes a touching openness in a world where
true sensations are increasingly mediatised. Conversely was it
the near universal mediation of personality and selling of self,
that sense of ongoing suave performance of the performed
not-me which is also me from blogs and from chatrooms
that gave the sense of veracity and self confidence to these
models? The model was not dead in the age of Facebook. The
wiki pages maintained by each student, not only provided
backup materials, working drawings and 2D support for their
modelling activities, but also continued that engagement with
actualising, ordering and choosing ideas and putting them
forward for discussion than threaded through the course.
Modelling in the public context of the class, in which it was
always assumed and expected that every gesture was to be
made in an open context of mutual respect and offered for
comment by peers and lecturers, was a similar process of
publication and self-commitment to ideas set in circulation.
One could also pause a moment to consider the issue of self.
Students drew on a wide range of vocabularies and constructs.
Some conceived very direct images of themselves. Others
saw themselves as made up of the sum of their personal
interests and concerns and drew imagery for their model
from hobbies and leisure time activities. Others used the
model to describe the current state or phase of their lives, or
perhaps to actualise their interpretation of the current state
of their lives. Some passed up psychological and personal
mapping to create models of ethical and political values that
engaged them. Another approach was to situate the self
geographically – referencing journeys, distance, national and
cultural elements that may distinguish them from their peers.
The students revealed a degree of cosmopolitan backgrounds
– not only the most obvious candidates of the overseas and
exchange students, but also some of the “Australians” had
spent time overseas in childhood, as well as in more recent
work and travel and drew upon folklore/imagery and the
physical experience of these different places to inform the
personas which they constructed. This alertness to a global and
interconnected world would especially later come to the fore
in the more intellectual exercise of researching water where
comparisons were frequently made between the Australian
patterns of unthinking and hedonistic squandering of water
and the developing “crises” of water in other countries
Another moment of revelation was when the models were
placed together on the table top to make a single entity, a
Poise cityscape. The only real restriction that was written
into the brief was the base was to be 150 x 150 cm. This
allowed for a shared fixed point between these very diverse
interpretations of modeling the self. The laying out of the
models side by side and also manipulating the lighting on the
models indicated how much the physical nature of the model
does impact upon how the model is read, how the audience
views the model and also what information is drawn
SECOND PROJECT WORKED ON BY STUDENTS AS INDIVIDUALS
MOZART, HITLER AND WATER
For this part of the assignment students should think about
the politics of water not only as an environmental issue but
as a social, cultural and artistic concern.
Students had two tasks to complete to present to the class
on successive weeks with a research project to act as
supporting documentation.
This project moved the question from the model as the telling
of the self to using the model to represent a story of wider
cross-reference. Partly this step meant a return to a more
familiar type of research activity, the gathering of information,
rather that the actualising of it as a model. Rather than
focusing on and interpreting the self, the process involved
the familiar study task of locating a problem/issue, gathering
of information and the answering of the question. As water
is now a universal subject for concern in the popular press
internationally, there was no shortage of current information DESERTLEAC POD UNDER CONSTRUCTION
DIESES MOGEN TIM MASSUGER HARD AT WORK
and the Powerpoint and PDF-supported spoken presentations
generated lively and thoughtful debate amongst the class.
Beyond the issue of modelling, lecturers and students had
a fast track education in arcane and surprising facts about
water at a local and international level. There was a strong
undercurrent of concern about sustainability, which perhaps
is not surprising given the increased prominence of these issues
in both education and journalism. Consideration of spiritual
and ritual aspects of water was frequently foregrounded even
though the stress of the class was on practical issues around
the role of models in the design process. Could this tendency
towards a spiritualising interpretation be a commentary on the
current zeitgeist, or a manner of thinking amongst younger
generations, who are drawn to a more holistic approaches than
older constructs of formal post-enlightenment thought?
The work of Dr Masuro Emoto’s water crystal experiments
around the emotional properties of water, and the possibility
for Mozart’s music to cleanse water whilst photographs of
Adolf Hitler set molecules into a frenzy, appeared concurrently
in the presentations of a number of students with no apparent
collusion other than they all as individuals found that Emoto
resonated with their own feelings about water. Though
appealing, some quick internet research revealed – at least
for this author - that Emoto’s experiments have not yet been
repeated outside his laboratory; his published accounts of them
often lack sufficient experimental controls although sceptics
have offered large cash rewards for anyone who can provide
verifiable and repeatable results. Lest anyone think Poise was
a crucible of “bad science”, or “post-modern physics” other
students tracked high level scientific research into water
by organisations such as NASA.
The second assignment returned to an easier series of
constructs and more familiar study and research patterns.
However this step brokered more visible difficulties. The pitfalls
that became apparent were in moving from the relatively
easy task of communication via text – which was something
that all the students had been engaged with throughout their
tertiary years – towards simultaneously producing a model
that represented an essence or core of the contention. Whilst
everyone is nowadays expected to be able to talk fluently
about themselves, the second assignment offered the hardest
briefs. The translation of ideas from conventional lecture
presentation to distilling these ideas into formats and images
that could be conveyed through modelling was a particularly
complex one that required a mixture of analytical and intuitive
skills. Many of the best models also had a sculptural, fine
arts presence, with a subtle appreciation of the materials in
a formalist sense. Again it is possible, as with the spiritual
aspects of the Poise experience, this was not an intended
outcome, but the sculptural, like the emotional established
a toehold in the outcomes of the studio. The downside
at this stage of the studio was the likelihood of students
of being unable to locate the right balance to achieve
maximum communication. The verbal presentations were
densely packed with content, but it was more difficult to
be able to conduit that content into the model, and in some
cases the presentations could become top heavy in relation
to the model. The relationship of the model to the carefully
researched presentations could be obtuse, haphazard or even
somewhat trivial. There was a sense in some cases of model
making being a secondary consideration after all that exciting
time on the net and in the library.
The model seemed unable to sustain and communicate all that
heartfelt research. One of the skill bases that consolidated
with greater experience as the studio progressed was
a greater capacity to match model to intention, to shape
ideas so that they could be effectively communicated as
a model. Many students sought to make the often subtle
and ineffable qualities of water visible through their models.
Those who achieved this aim in a plausible manner provided
much fascinating evidence about how selection of formats
and imagery facilitates communication of ideas and concepts
via models. With a maker/designer who is alert and adept in
both conception and physical process, no idea seemed beyond
capture by a model. The richness and variety of student
responses to the brief was notable.
Failures could be as informative as the poetic and sculptural
successes – such as the attempt to freeze water into
architecture, by dripping liquid plaster through cloth.
This model was a failure in practical terms as the plaster
was too liquid for the shell to survive for long before it
shattered, but photographs of the model before
it set testify to the interesting questions that it set
up by this and the ambitiousness of the nearly realised project.
Again materials ranged from those traditionally highly
expensive and prized such actual gold leaf and silk, substances
that have been prized in many eras and cultures, to discarded
plastic bottles (themselves a comment upon waste and land
degradation), from stone to wax. Models were not only
present in the room. Students posted their models as films
on the Poise Wiki and You Tube as an element of their search
to find processes and formats that communicated their ideas
as models.
THE FOURTH ASSIGNMENT: A-HA WITH DESERTLEAC AND PLAYING DOWN AND DIRTY AT THE SWIMMING POOL
Our process, as you say, was very fluid, we didn’t allow ourselves to be held back by time/cost/space requirements
Caitlin Smooker
The fourth project was the penultimate, students forming
groups who worked on a project from the previous
assignment. There was an extended period of work on this
assignment, allowing for testing and revising. There was the
overall development of the concept. There were also the micro
tasks placed upon the students in that they had to explore
certain scales of modelling and finally produce an element
of their project in a one to one scale. Models provided
an essential driving energy in this project which deserves
an essay to itself.
No better demonstration of the role of models in the design
process emerged than the work of the DesertLEAC group,
which had taken some false steps at the very start of the fourth
project. Models not only brought a potential disaster to heel,
but offered up an extraordinary range of different explorations
of a single issue through alternative models,
DESERTLEAC PRESENTATION
which starting from different premises, began to interact
and inform each other. DesertLEAC produced some startling
outcomes, architecture from fabric and seating from turf,
which were brought to a high degree of completeness as
one to one models.
Conversely Dieses Mogen who were accomplished model
makers enacted a mannerist attention to their extraordinarily
dramatic model. This model almost drove the makers rather
than the other way around. The model generated its own
creative energy and dictated terms to the makers and became
a site for reflection rather that prototyping. That the model,
which was highly architectural, did not convey much of the
information expected from such a classically formed structure
never quite registered on viewers, as the documentation took
on a cinematic poetic impetus, enhanced by photograph and
films. The studio was given a lesson in power of model making,
not so much in making a model of a specific item, but how
models could transcend the relatively simple technologies
that produced them and create illusions that offered more
avenues for thought. The inconvenient truth that the building
could never exist for OH&S and public safety reasons was
banished by the total illusion of credibility and purpose given
out by the model. Nor was there any hint of the public unease
that in real life would have greeted a building that combined
the Baths of Caracalla with pre-aids New York, with vaulted
Victorian sewers and the local municipal pool complex with the
social function and self consciously eye catching avant garde
architecture of a bar - all on a walk up basis for fee paying
customers. It was fairly solid for a model, and in some ways
quite pompous and demanding in its footprint, especially in its
massive physical quality. Quite the opposite to the evanescent,
shimmering structures of Andrea Mina, yet the baths captured
the emotions as readily, through strategies of representation.
Dieses Mogen’s project raised questions about the real versus
fantasy, the functional model versus the dollshouse and offered
the possibility that both these strategies were valid and could
be informative about spatiality. All of the architecture was
interior, the outside of the model was in effect buried deep
underground. Moreover no questions were asked about the
energy and piping that would service these labyrinthine series
of dark and moist spaces. As in love and war, is all fair in model
making, when done with panache?
STUDENT REFLECTION FROM POISE
COOPERATION/DISCIPLINE MIX
As one of the lecturers I could note that not only did Poise
combine students from five different programs but it also
combined local, overseas and exchange students and enriched
their understanding of practice. This intermingling does not
always happen at a personal or a project level in the class,
often students stay in their particular friendship circle.
Personally I took away, a better understanding for working in
different medias. I also walked away with a greater knowledge
of working in a group …It was so good to work with other
students from other disciplines, I learnt a lot from others in
this studio. It made the semester a lot more interesting. It also
made me appreciate, other design fields.
Lauren Gillard
The interdisciplinary aspect of the studio was one of the
biggest highlights. After three years in any design program at
RMIT, you already know how most people in your year level
operate. Disciplinary conventions have already been adopted
and there in not much impetus for experimentation...you put
your head down and do the work. Immediately when put in
the situation of working outside your discipline you have to be
on the ball again, start listening and learning. It was interesting
to see the group dynamics unfold during the first few weeks
of the group work. Who was going to do the work? Who turns
up on time? It all was sussed pretty quickly in our group, after
a few beers the first week we got the project. The majority of
the group was fairly committed. In the studio on weekends...
happy to take phone calls early in the morning etc... This studio
atmosphere was great and unlike and other studio I have taken
at uni.
Julian Faelli
Understanding of collaborative work has skyrocketed.
A lot of people learnt some valuable lessons in this respect…
An amazing experience. Having idea’s thrown at you that
u would never think of was very prosperous and made design
quite easy sometimes. I guess u could call it a much more
streamlined process.
Timothy Massuger
It showed that designers can work cohesively together even if
they aren’t from the same discipline, also that sometimes it’ll
be the industrial designer who comes up with the best graphic
representation and vice versa.
Caitlin Smooker
The most valuable achievement is the experience through
working with different design students. A lot of ideas and
presentation methods were being exchanged and developed
through the processes of the studio … my design techniques
have developed because [so many] ideas [were] being renewed
and exchanged within the group. It is really different but
special… because the studio provided a good environment for
students who can [listen to] and communicate with different
kinds of students and teachers.
Traz Poon
MODELS
Working with models, was the best part of the studio.
Lauren Gillard
Models give people an understanding of an idea that would
not be conceivable on screen or paper. It leads to new ideas
and makes you see the flaws or notice the details. It also
creates a connection with the work.
Camilla Zanzanaini
With models people relate more to things they can move
around, and feel. Models can have a strong presence, but work
very well when captured with a good picture.
Carlos Garcia-Noriega Bueno
Working with models was central to the whole studio.
I really enjoyed spending the majority of my time at uni, doing
something physical and tangible. Not in front of a computer.
Such a refreshing and liberating thing to do. Developing the
skill to stop being so anal about them. Pushing them out one
after another... quickly testing and developing your ideas. I am
still not mercenary enough with my time to do this. However,
labouring over them does give you time to think a little harder.
Who knows which approach has the most merit? Models
are particularly suited for spatial visualization, proportions,
idea generation and finally used traditionally as a tool to
communicate a concept.
Julian Faelli
Models communicate a range of ideas, aesthetics, and
problems. They are also a good tool to test possibilities that
drawing and digital aids may not [help]. …They are amazing
tools in design. Allowing other people to see quite fast what
someone could only ever explain in a [longer] time. What can
be gleaned from 5 seconds of staring at a model is so much
more than any type of medium.
Timothy Massuger
One of our earlier meetings when we had decided on the site
and what we were going to build, and Anette, Ek and I just
cut random bits of board and started to develop our building,
as a model sketch, a medium we could all work together on
and then stand back and say ‘no don’t like that part’, remove
it, discuss, it created a forum where we were all equal. If the
models hadn’t been part of the studio I don’t think I would
have got much out of POISE, the building of models put us
all on even ground and forced us to talk and work together. I DESERTLEAC JULIETTE PEERS RELAXING IN POD
POISE STUDIO STUDENTS HARD AT WORK
learned that you never really know how an idea in your head
is going to work until you have attempted to make it work.
Models communicate sometimes more than what you as the
model maker think, for instance, in the final submission/crit
session I was afraid that it would be difficult for the board to
see the way the graphic thought was coherent throughout the
project however it was one of the first things observed. It was
also pointed out in that session that for our group they would
not be able to tell who had done what, and the use of models
helped us to achieve this as we could communicate amongst
ourselves through the models and what we brought into talk
about from week to week.
Caitlin Smooker
Before “Poise” I saw models only as a means of representation.
But through working with a group of multi-disciplinary
students it helped me better understand the role of models
in design - In terms of expressing my ideas to other disciplines.
For instance, when I drew a plan, everyone in my group could
not really understand what it meant except for the landscape
student. But after, when a sketch model was sort of produced,
the plan drawings became visible in terms of understanding to
the rest. Maybe… I’m narrow-minded. But I really don’t think
[model making] can be [improved] not like hand drawings was
improved with computer software). We’ve tried using the laser
cutter to help with modelling but it seemed too complicated,
too slow and too restricted in terms of design. I much prefer
using my hands.
Tze Ek Ng
PRACTICE
It was loose and interesting… I just found it relieving most
of the time because it was very engaging.
Camilla Zanzanaini
The studio has extended my understanding of practice because
in real life you contribute with people from other disciplines all
the time.
Carlos Garcia-Noriega Bueno
MOMENTS OF BREAKTHROUGH/POISE
Seeing all the final products, the input of so many people into
very interesting and diverse 6 products.
Carlos Garcia-Noriega Bueno
Overall I think the studio achieved a greater understanding
of model making in design. I also think it achieved a strong
knowledge of collaborative work and also the need for more
spaces, for example having access to the university system…
The time when the groups started mingling and helping each
other with ideas, created an environment that made designing
easy and was aided by the space we were using … it was
a turning point in the studio.
Timothy Massuger
I think the studio achieved something which it had set out
to from the beginning – designing using models (from my
understanding – it’s also one of the reasons I chose this studio)
another great experience was that I got to work with fashion
students who usually deal with materials on a 1:1 scale,
but for me as an architecture student, materials for buildings
seemed distant.
Tze Ek Ng
DIESES MOGEN 1:20 WORKING MODEL
THE MODEL AS LONELY PLANET GUIDE WHAT ELSE WE LEARNED
The idea of collaborative practice was introduced in the third
brief that led to the fourth brief as each student also needed
to consider the possible connections that their design could
have to others in the course. All the students knew that from
the third project there would emerge a core of projects which
would move into the final phase and effectively sustain the
work of groups of students from different disciplines.
The projects brought into the final phase reflected the
range of students in the studio and included the idea of
a garment that would recycle urine to solve the water crisis,
artistic projections that raised public consciousness about
water, a wave driven power station at the entry to Port Phillip
Bay, with a CBD sculpture cum gauge recording how much
energy the power station was generating, a building that
drenched itself in a curtain of Yarra Water, garments that
soaked and wick-ed water, public interpretative centres
in Studley Park and a Docklands sport centre.
The third assignment had returned to a more conventional
idea of the model. Students were asked to produce the model
of an object specific to their design training and develop
in terms of the expected practices of their media but also
still centrally referencing water. Again the sheer versatility
of the outcomes impressed as did the sharp upwards curve
of the mutual education set in motion when students explained
about their concept in detail. As the landscape and architecture
students were specifically asked to interact with a site around
Melbourne, Poise became a sort of alternative tour guide
in a Lonely Planet idiom for Melbourne, and it was not only
overseas students who were brought up to speed on hidden
attractions of the city.
Thinking of guide books raises the issue of where does one
go looking, and how ought one to look, for a catalyst for
matching the brief’s requirements. Then having looked and
found, what can one make of the gathered material and the
response to the brief. Surviving this process of dealing with
ideas, of evaluating a project’s potential for future outcomes
was another skill that was implicitly tested and explored.
Model making was not only informed by physical skill but
by this ability to judge and select in the early exploratory
phases. In both the third and fourth assignments this “Poise”
of judgment was implicitly present at the very foundational
steps. These steps were matched by a more sophisticated
integration of narrative and content with the chosen design
product, at least in the high achieving presentations.
Modelling, however, also allowed for less than successful
outcomes to be turned inside out and gain a new life. Not only
the poetics of model making and design came to the fore,
but also the issue of time, the classes fluctuated as each group
had different phases – from stagnation and lack of outcome
to an intense burst of activity that began to produce results.
For some students this intense burst of activity came at once,
for others ideas had to be worked doggedly upon, in order
to move beyond the impasse. For the white-heaters, the model
was essential to forcing this process into life, for the slower
workers, models needed to be analysed in detail, but not so
that a bigger trajectory was lost in the unessentials and wrong
turnings. Within the modelling process the solution that would
set the project in a more productive direction was often to
be found if the right questions were asked of it. The resulting
images and models speak for themselves.
DESERTLEAC RORY HYDE ON GRASS CHAIR
The ambition of exploring model making in these Landscape
Architecture courses was to investigate the process of making
as one that is simultaneously analytical and generative. In this
manner the outcomes captured here are of equal importance
to their process of becoming, or what they might yet become.
This notion determines a making of models ‘for design’1
where ideas are challenged and transformed through the
confrontation of the laws and possibilities of becoming. In
these models the dynamic making process is revealed as
being analogous to the medium of Landscape as one in a
constant state of flux, and embraces the notion of an idea as a
transformative entity that remains open and inclusive.
Making ideas challenges and transforms them through seeing
possibilities through a process of association. Comprised of
the phenomenon of spatiality, temporality, and materiality, the
dynamic medium of Landscape is continually re-making itself.
The making of models embraces this notion of change and
changeability which enables an outcome (a model) to remain
open, inclusive, and plugged into the landscape it is exploring.
This describes making of models as an act of re-making in
congruence to the re-making in the landscape. If the act of
MAKING LANDSCAPE: THICKENED GROUND & RE-MAKING
CRAIG DOUGLAS & ROSALEA MONACELLA
CHANTELLE MATTHEWS
looking at something in the world is considered as an act of
violence that essentially rips the subject from its environment,
the making of models ‘for design’ necessarily does this, yet
at the same time has the ability to remain plugged into the
context of its existence, and subsequently the resonance of its
being concurrently informs that environment. In this manner
the model is ‘less a finished “work of art,” and even less a
tool for communicating instrumental ideas, than it is itself a
catalytic locale of inventive subterfuges.’2
The notion of re-making as a process of both the Landscape
and the act of model making determines that a model’s critical
state may exist prior to, or after its present state of being, or
in fact be a combination of many states over time. Time in the
process of making and becoming can then be considered as a
‘destabilising but creative milieu … to bear each thing along,
generating it and degenerating it in the process’.3
Making models ‘for design’ in the Landscape has been
employed in these courses as simultaneously a device of
analysis and generation. The process of making models
that describe the Landscape as a system of material and
62
(CLOCKWISE FROM TOP LEFT)
JASON FLAHERTY GEMMA FENNELE (2 WORKS)
SARAH BORG
performative relationships is facilitated by its inherent use
of physical materials which are assigned performative values
relative to forces identified in the Landscape.
The act of making models develops and comes to imbue a
sense of emergence associated to the Landscape through
the creation of its own sensibility or internal logic. Physical
materials for making are thus selected and employed according
to their performative characteristics related to an aspect of the
Landscape. The model inherently becomes enabled by its own
performative internal logic to describe the forces, and their
convergence, in the Landscape. In this manner the analytical
model indexes the complex workings of the Landscape and
offers a set of criteria in which to act.
Simultaneously, the materials of the model that are imbued
with performative tendencies and specific qualities are
engaged with through various techniques of making which
overlay a new set of criteria onto the ideas ‘being’, explode
and transform. These criteria may perform two functions; to
be associated with a force in the Landscape, and therefore
act accordingly in the model through the materials, or, act as
another avenue of exploration privy to the behaviour of the
model and its maker. Therefore the intelligence of the making
process is not only to be found in the hands of the maker, but
in every cell of the body, this includes the physical body of
the maker and that of the model. A resonance is enacted that
defines reciprocity, an internal logic, between the material
tendency and its behaviour as defined by a technique of
transformation. The productive ambiguity of this act suggests
the doppelganger of making as being simultaneously specific
and vague. By departing from its projected trajectory, a
model may reveal other valid potentials. ‘Catastrophe theory
recognises that every event (or form) enfolds within it a
multiplicity of forces and is the result of not one, but many
different causes’.4
Landscape Architecture as a field event embraces the notion of
relational forces where form is a production in the Landscape.
Furthermore, it engages with the idea that the field may
be altered through the manipulation of these relationships.
Making that engages this idea constantly tests and records
‘spatial and tactile qualities through a process of association’5
that describes the emergence of a field event at moments of
convergence, or divergence of forces and positions the process
of making as one of the production of emergent form in the
Landscape field.
1 Ranulph Glanville, lecture: Models and Intentions, Homo
Faber Symposium, June 1st, Melbourne, Australia, RMIT
University, 2006
2 Corner, James, ‘Representation and landscape’, in Simon
Swaffield (ed.) Theory in Landscape Architecture: A reader,
Philadelphia: University of Philadelphia Press, 2002, p.165
3 Kwinter, Sanford, ‘Landscapes of Change’, in Assemblage
(19), Cambridge, Massachusetts, The MIT Press, 1992, p.52
4 Kwinter, Sanford, ‘Landscapes of Change’, in Assemblage
(19), Cambridge, Massachusetts, The MIT Press, 1992, p.60
5 Corner, James, ‘Representation and Landscape’, in Simon
Swaffield (ed.) Theory in Landscape Architecture: A Reader,
Philadelphia: University of Philadelphia Press, 2002, p.145
is to highlight the possibilities and power of investigative,
interpretive making. This brings to bear the important role
of interpretation, the act of seeing and reading as both
a catalyst and enabler of the making process. The act of
seeing recognises critical moments in the making process
that may define, or re-define the trajectory of exploration;
recognising moments which may prove or dispel, connect
or disconnect, reveal and infer other potentials. In this light
John Rajchman writes of “…finding within things the delicate,
complicated abstract virtualities of other things”. The making
process is a catalyst for the transformation of an idea, and
the model outcome a container of knowledge. What became
interesting during the exploration of making models with
the students was that outcomes presented by individuals
acted as a knowledge trigger that posed different knowledge
for each class member, therefore generating new potentials
of exploration. No model can unequivocally present one set
of meanings or convey exact and precise knowledge; they
act as metaphors act. Models trigger a range of possible
readings that draw on the extant knowledges of their
readers to provoke journeys into new territories.
CRAIG DOUGLAS & PETER DOWNTON
The medium of Architects and Landscape Architects
encompasses a diverse range of representation modes,
from drawing and text to physical modelling and virtual
constructions. This is a necessary requirement as we are
abstracted from the actual medium of our disciplines for
we do not physically build the architectures of our design.
The process of making models of an idea is not a surrogate
for this condition, but instead offers a fertile ground for the
transformation of ideas through the confrontation of the
laws and possibilities of becoming.
Making models of ideas where acts of ‘making’ are embraced
as part of a process of investigation and discovery may be
likened in some ways to the act of drawing. James Corner
suggests that “…as a vehicle of creativity, drawing is a highly
imaginative and speculative activity, entailing both spontaneity
and reflection. It first involves the making of marks and
the ‘seeing’ of possibilities. Such work is both imaginal
and theoretical, making images and recording spatial and
tactile qualities through a process of association.” Models so
often ‘illustrate’ designs already made. The aim of paralleling
model making with the kind of drawing described by Corner
RE-MAKING: IDEAS AND MODELS
SARAH BORG
65
KIM HO HYUN
Critical to this exploration was the notion of the reciprocity
of making that engages the intelligence of the body of the
maker, and that of the body of the model. This established
a framework of spontaneity that allowed the model to have an
unfolding life of its own that includes mistakes and failures as
necessary events. Class discussion revealed that the perceived
‘accidents’ were often discoveries enabled by the making
process; the residual escalating effect of a misaligned part
may have undermined the rigid order of the whole, yet more
accurately described the forces at work in a body. Clearly,
in a model intended to accurately represent a preexisting
design, such accidents must be remedied. In investigative
modelling ‘accidents’ lead to new paths of discovery.
They require a degree of adjustment to the narrative
surrounding the making for the maker – story the maker
tells him or herself about the meanings, directions and
concerns of the modelling evolve in concert with the making
to take advantage of the events of modelling and shape the
future explorations. The maker must adapt and accommodate
to the dictates of materials and events.
Iteration is also a necessary component of model making
that aligns itself with the potential of discovery. “The iteration
is a self similar but non-identical repetition betraying a drift
in form which bears a certain similarity to its original but
which, nevertheless, avoids identity”. The iteration within
the construction of a model, or between different models,
builds on the potentials of the former, and creates new effects
through difference. Incremental changes amplify the ideas
modelled; the end outcome has survived through processes
of ideation and evaluation by the modeller.
The fundamental issue here is that the process of making
is a continuous and dynamic one based on the fundamental
attributes of space, material and time. Within this equation
of the making of an idea, and therefore its being, a state
prior to (or yet to be) may be of equal or greater importance.
This notion is significant as it describes making as a continual
process of re-making.
The ‘Re-making’ course explored this notion of making
as a continual process of re-making where an idea came
to be understood as a transformative entity rather than
a static one. Possibilities emerged in the process of making
models through a series of exercises in the form of a brief,
a specific material, and a technique. What quickly became
apparent was the contestation and transformation of an
idea by the roles associated with the material and those
of its inherent tendencies relevant to its performance under
various techniques. A complex feedback loop of simultaneous
relationships was established. Each week students were given
a new design brief to explore through a specific material and
presented with the characteristic tendencies of that material.
A set of techniques was demonstrated which afforded
a manner in which the material might be engaged.
This equation of a material performance and technique
acted as the driver for the interrogation of the brief,
and its inherent transformation into the real.
As previously discussed it quickly became apparent that an
idea is necessarily a transformative entity. The understanding
of what an idea actually is, and where it comes from became
CAITLIN PERRY
a constant discussion point in the class that revolved around
an idea as the connection between elements of knowledge
(what is known to an individual) in new ways, establishing
new relationships that inherently change the nature of the
elements themselves. The making, or in this case the re-making
of the idea was seen to extend this notion by making new
relationships in the material world. Furthermore, the physical
actuation of the idea came to be understood as a catalyst
for this condition.
Similar findings were apparent in the Manual Ideas studio
although it employed different attitudes to materials.
In that case the materials palette was not controlled
except for the proscription of card, balsa and foam core.
Metals, timbers, resins, fabrics – usually in combinations
– were utilised to express and explore the individual’s ideas.
More time was necessary for each model with these materials
and iterative investigation on a given brief was limited and
usually undertaken in mock-ups using simpler materials or
rough versions of the final materials. There was a rich cross-
pollination between materials and ideas: the materials shaped
the ideas as frequently as ideas led to particular patterns
of material use. That there was iterative development
of themes and approaches by students across the five
projects they undertook in the studio was revealed in their
own reflection on, and curation of, their work in the form
of portfolios.
There was a sense in which ‘re-making’ occurred as a group
process, for as ideas and projects developed in the studio
a shared set of ideas also developed over and above that
of each individual. A group attitude and a group approach
could be discerned that was constantly reforming and
transforming the collective knowledge. The role of the
models in this was not only as vehicles for exploration
by the individual and as transmitters of knowledge,
but as facilitators of the group conversation and learning.
CHANTELLE MATTHEWS
(from the tiny flat in Sydney where he was born, though his
rooms at Cambridge and subsequent family houses around
the world, to the nursing home room where he lived the last
year of his life) and gathers all their various spaces into one
aggregated and re-membered house. A series of floor plans
drawn from memory by my father, constitutes the initial
conditions of this project. These re-collected plans, conceived
as a kind of generative data-set, produce two divergent
spatialisations of memory: one architectural, one topological.
These two spatialisations of memory, first digitally modelled,
were then pursued through the materials of my fathers
professional life, in particular his catalysis research archive.
Using both digital and manual paper cutters, a series of
contour and sectional forms in positive and negative modes,
were cut into his research card index file. His experimental
log books, and his father’s machine tools are deployed in this
iteration of the work to re-arrange and ‘pose’ the forms.
It is through these combined digital and manual operations
with their nuances of precision, delicacy, fragility and intimacy,
which, together with propositional procedures of compression,
CHARLES ANDERSON
The Greeks called art and the work techne, which also includes the meaning knowledge. Art was art not because it was produced but because through it something becomes visible.
Martin Heidegger
These ‘process forms’ are from the first part of a larger
ongoing project titled A House for Hermes. This project is part
of a meditation on modernity and place making. By hybridizing
generative procedures to materialise processes of time, this
project endeavours to reformulate the spatial hierarchies that
characterize the lived spaces of our world.
The House of My Father*, the first iteration of this larger
ongoing project, explores the relationship between memory,
place, movement, and ‘home’.
This project recalls the many houses that my father lived in
A HOUSE FOR HERMES: THE HOUSE OF MY FATHER
CHARLES ANDERSON PROCESS FORMS: THE HOUSE OF MY FATHER
69
CHARLES ANDERSON INSTALLATION: THE HOUSE OF MY FATHER
interleaving, leaning, balancing, holding, and weighting,
combine with the specificity of matter to enact memory
rather than model it.
I refer to these works as process forms. These forms are not
models of (some extant thing) nor are they models for (some
future action). They may suggest these attributes by association
or even assume them at some time after the event of their
making, but they are primarily ‘the thing itself’.
Rather than intermediary abstractions, simplifications,
or distilled essences they are direct spatio-temporal operations,
momentary configurations in matter of an evolving idea.
Indeed it is in the performative mode of their making and
in the particularity of the material that the idea ‘becomes’.
In other words, process forms do not fall within the
representational paradigm: they do not model an idea
they are the idea.
* A House for Hermes #1: The House of My Father was first
exhibited at the Tarrawarra Museum of Art in the first half
of 2007.
CHARLES ANDERSON PROCESS FORMS: THE HOUSE OF MY FATHER
The distinction between a model and a tool is blurred in my
process of making holograms.
1 THE VIRTUAL WINDOW
This model (or two bits of cardboard) was used investigate how
the ‘virtual window’ of master holograms translate into the
final holographic image.
2 STENCIL PATTERNS
My master holograms are composed of a number of exposures
that are recorded into different parts of the holographic
emulsions using stencil masks. The stencil pattern determines
which recording is seen from each perspective, allowing for a
spatial animation of the object. As the animation occurs in a
dark lab, sometimes over long periods of time, it is important
to have both a plan and a procedure.
These stencils were used to make the hologram but can also be
used with the model of the virtual window to plan the image.
MARTINA MRONGOVIUS
The process of making holograms relies heavily on geometry.
The hologram itself is a recording of the shape of the laser
beam, created by the interference pattern of two or more
beams of light.
The physical space and optics in a holography lab shape the
practice of making holograms. Holographers often combined
precision equipment with home-made bits to manipulate the
laser light.
To record a hologram the light from the laser is split,
manipulated with optics (mirrors and lenses), optical processors
(such Digital Mirror Devices and Holographic Optical Elements)
and objects, before being recombined at the holographic
recording material.
Since the hologram records the inference pattern of light the
split laser beams must all arrive at the holographic emulsion at
the same time, so the distance travelled by each beam should
be the same. One of the most useful tools in holography is
string, allowing for the translation between the designed and
physical arrangement.
A COLLECTION OF MODELS FOR DESIGNING OPTICAL GEOMETRY & CREATING HOLOGRAPHIC IMAGES
MARTINA MRONGOVIUS THE VIRTUAL WINDOW
72
MARTINA MRONGOVIUS THE OBJECT MODEL
3 THE OBJECT MODEL
This object is made from found and inherited bits, combining
natural forms with manufactured designs.
In traditional object-based holography the model needs to stay
very still for the duration of the exposure - if the object shifts
even half a wavelength of light (0.0000001m) the hologram
will appear completely blank.
A sandbox offers one good solution for both moving the object
and keeping it stable.
In the early 1970s the west-coast school of holography
encouraged artists to be independent of scientific laboratories.
One of the signatures of this movement was the sandbox table
that was used to mount all the optical components.
4 GEOMETRY PIN BOARD
The pin board marks out the positions of optical equipment
on the holography bench, this particular configuration
shows the transfer geometry used to make the hologram on
display. The pin board is a 1:4 scale model that can be used
to plan holograms and/or to record the set-up, allowing for
measurements of distances and angles.
5 THE INSTALLATION
The installation of this hologram with a mirror in
a sandbox refers both to the physical and poetic process
of making holograms.
MARTINA MRONGOVIUS (CLOCKWISE FROM LEFT)
ANIMATION PLANE CALCULATIONS STENCIL PATTERNS GEOMETRY PIN BOARD
MARTINA MRONGOVIUS THE INSTALLATION
all disciplines in building and construction. The hegemony
of paper based design and physical model-making has
gradually been augmented by the possibilities offered by
digital tools for drafting, analysis and simulation of design-
related aspects. Computer aided architectural design and
manufacturing (CAAD/CAM) offers a variety of interfacing
possibilities for communicating ideas, passing on information,
and working on diverse aspects of design in a more concurrent
fashion across disciplines. Rapid prototyping assists in the
automated generation of physical models directly off a digital
3D geometry file, which enables instant (or at least fast)
visualising. These developments have brought benefits to the
students in the field by augmenting their design-capabilities
and allowing them to explore design in a playful manner.
The use of specialist software for drafting, 3D modelling
and performance analysis is offering assistance in the rapid
generation of design options for evaluation and design
decision support.
Working on projects individually, students have investigated
how analogue and digital means of design can complement
each other as a matter of course and how they can be applied
DOMINIK HOLZER
The choice of an adequate design methodology is an essential
ingredient to any creative process in either education or
practice. This essay discusses the case-study work undertaken
by architecture students at RMIT University to scrutinise
their design methodology when confronted with the task
of optimising a specific aspect of building performance.
The student’s design methodology is based on –
amongst others:
- their conceptual framework
- their skill level
- the available tools to them
- and the craftsmanship
One aim of the class was to investigate the ways architecture
students communicate design performance and share
information by seamlessly integrating sketches, physical
model-making and digital modelling in a holistic approach
to reach their goal.
The past two decades have seen a drastic change in the way
design is being communicated within architecture and across
COMMUNICATING IDEAS – SHARING INFORMATION MOVING SEAMLESSLY BETWEEN THE VIRTUAL AND THE PHYSICAL IN ARCHITECTURAL DESIGN
SIMON PEARCE WAVE MODEL
76
jointly to drive the design process and bridge across disciplines.
The semester was run in two parts. During the first half
students generated a series of small projects which address
issues of building performance for structural, acoustic and sun
shading/daylight criteria. They were asked to produce physical
models and to test structural, acoustic and environmental
performance in order to demonstrating their functionality.
Guest lecturers from outside the architectural domain have
joined in to discuss issues of information-sharing and report
from experience in practice and to give feedback on the quality
of the models. In the second half of the semester students
were asked to focus on one project in order to develop
a design methodology which allows them to optimise
geometry and material usage in relation to a particular
performance requirement. The focus of the exercise was
to explore the ‘aesthetics of performance’ and understand
the various implications of using analogue and digital media
to achieve this goal.
Assessment criteria encompassed originality of the conceptual
approach, the adequacy of media chosen and the quality
of information provided for relating the design-idea to the
performance requirement.
Influenced by their experimentation during the first half
of the semester, most students chose to focus on working
on a sustainability project which included the generation of
sun shading options for achieving maximum daylight entry
with minimum solar gain for a façade. The process of
addressing performance optimisation for the shading
device included simple tests to comprehend the effects
of the changing summer-winter solstice as well as changing
solar angles during the day. Once the students were aware
of the basic implications various shading options bring
to bare, they were encouraged to start designing with
shading performance in mind. This implies a step away from
understanding shading as a technical add-on to a façade,
to creating shading options which strongly influence the
appearance of a building. To this point of the semester most
students had been relying on their physical model-making skills
to gain tacit knowledge about the relation between shading
options, sun angles and the shadows that were cast. SIMON PEARCE BUSAN MODEL
SIMON PEARCE (FROM LEFT TO RIGHT)
BUSAN MODEL SHADE MODEL
Once students had reached a point where they wanted
to explore more complex, non repetitive shading options,
or shading devices for irregularly shaped buildings, they were
willing to extend their investigation into the virtual world.
In many cases this occurred by first re-modelling their latest
physical model by computer to compare it to the virtual one.
This was undertaken to gain confidence in the accuracy of the
tool they were using and their capability to simulate a real-life
scenario by computer.
The uptake of digital technology to drive the design varied
from student to student as did the goals that could be achieved
by it. Whereas some students used their digitally augmented
models to test a plurality of versions to choose from, others
used them to refine one specific design solution and others
again used them to extract bill of quantities to compare
material usage to shading efficiency. The immediacy of gaining
feedback from daylight analysis under varying conditions was
of greatest importance to advance the design in all cases.
As a final step some of the students went back to refine their
physical models once the digital investigation had given them
satisfying results.
During class students were asked why they preferred
to focus on sustainability issues rather then structural
or acoustic ones. They responded by explaining that there
were no tools available to them which would assist to conduct
rudimentary, structural or acoustic analysis to understand
how these performance aspects would influence their project.
In retrospect, the investigation of sustainability was seen
as the most appropriate task given that each student could
instantly comprehend the subject matter, produce hands-on
physical models using simple materials like paper/cardboard
and simulate sun-angles by positioning spot-lights. Further,
the students were able to gain the skills needed to reproduce
the models virtually and to run basic daylight-analysis software.
This allowed them to consequently read-in geometrical
information generated with any common modelling 3D tool
and they were able to visualise geographically-specific daylight
scenarios in real time.
ALLISON CLANEY SUN SHADING DEVICE
of models to create a 3D light-point matrix, the Spatial
Dynamic Media System. In the following the 8 different models
built in the experiment series to achieve a prototype should
be explained.
The narrative of the design of the LED stick started with
an experiment which proves the possibility of designing space
with light. Experiment series I should prove the question
if space can be defined by light points. This will be done
using a model where Christmas lights will be attached onto
a net. This net will then be physically moved to analyse if
a dynamic surface can be perceived. This perceived surface
will then be further developed where technical components
will deliver a surface or form within a 3D matrix.
From this, the development of the research project will
be based on tests to improve and find evidence for a final
product. Here most knowledge is gained from the results of
the undertaken experiments. This experiment series led the
research in following methodology. A research question which
has occurred in will be answered by a series of experiments.
The questions will be answered but on the same time it could
M. HANK HAEUSLER
The core project within my PhD research has been the
development of a system as an extension of existing media
facades that allows me to test the representation
of information and ideas as ‘form’ within space that is
constantly generated and regenerated as a result of fresh
input. The hypothesis of my PhD is that this real time re-
configuration of space using light offers a variety of new
perceptions ranging from information sharing to public art
never experienced previously. During my research, I have
established an extensive body of evidence that points to
a growing scholarship around the details and impacts of media
façade technological developments and the content displayed
on them. In the thesis I define the boundaries of these
technology shifts and enhanced content combinations limited
to 2 dimensions. In my research I consider the technical and
media implications of extending conventional 2D screens which
are limited currently to architectural cladding into a 3D matrix
thereby causing an alteration to spatial perception through the
content animating the 3D matrix.
The development of the above discussed system, the LED stick
has been processed by designing an experiment series
DEVELOPMENT OF THE LED STICK AS A SINGLE COMPONENT OF THE SPATIAL DYNAMIC MEDIA SYSTEM THROUGH AN EXPERIMENT SERIES WITH MODELS
M. HANK HAEUSLER DETAIL SPATIAL DYNAMIC MEDIA SYSTEM AS A RENDERED IMAGE
80
M. HANK HAEUSLER (CLOCKWISE FROM TOP LEFT)
WOOD FORM TESTING TO PROOF BASE OF PROTOTYPE PROTOTYPE LED STICK AS A RESULT OF SIX PREVIOUS EXPERIMENTS TEST OF SURFACE VISIBILITY WHEN DEFINED BY LIGHT POINTS
M. HANK HAEUSLER LED STICKS ARRANGEMENTS ON AN ARMATURE TO ESTABLISH A SPATIAL DYNAMIC MEDIA SYSTEM
cause a question which then has been addressed in the next
experiment, etc.
When using LEDs embedded in acrylic sticks and arranging
them in a 3D matrix the next concern of experiment series II
is the masking of one stick with another. Which quality of LED
is necessary in regards to the brightness and perception of
LEDs? With answering this question a certain type of LED
can be specified to used in further experiments.
After having defined a surface generated by light points
in experiment series I the question of how a beholder can
perceive a surface must now be defined. A test surface was
firstly generated in a 3D model environment and then altered
to a surface defined by light points. This surface defined
by light points will then be rebuilt in a physical model in
experiment series III. The physical model will be used to
answer the question, if a surface created by light points can
be perceived if parts of the lights are masked by a substructure.
After answering this question there are further experiments
to determine from which angles/positions the beholder
can see the full surface (all lights) or can see enough light
to understand the form or the shape of the surface. These
two experiments allow a first conclusion of the appearance
of the proposed system. The experiments allowed a critical
understanding of how much masking is caused by the
substructure and how much is caused by the LEDs and if
there is any possibility of improving the set-up to eliminate
these problems. Solutions for the masking problem were
found when improving the system by actions such as using
water-clear LEDs; using SMD LED technology; through
a different arrangement of more than one LED to create
light points; through using invisible conducting layer instead
of cables, and; through placing LEDs into small chambers
instead of tubes.
As most masking caused in the physical model is a result
of the wires, experiment series IV is an experiment to reduce
the wires was set up. This experiment did not result in an
improvement of the system, due to the inability of reducing
the amount of wires per stick with the method used in the
experiment. Nevertheless the possibility of using conductive
layers, as seen in experiment series V will render obsolete
the masking caused by wires.
The design of a product based on the previous five experiments
will thus complete the experiments in experiment VI till VII,
where first form testing of the LED stick has been made
in experiment series VI. The rod of the LED stick with the
chambers of the LED stick has been built as a negative
for vacuum forming in experiment series VII to manufacture
the rods out of acrylic. Experiment series VIII shows then the
final prototype of the LED stick. Here different model making
techniques such as 3D plaster printing, CAD CAM milling,
vacuum forming, laser cutting have been combined to build
the model.
The eight experiments demonstrate a shift of resolving the
design from a sketch level at the beginning to a model with
state of the art considerations on two levels. Firstly, the
experiments have in the duration of the design been more
professional in their making by having increasing model making
skills and techniques available and secondly with increasing
the level of sophistication in model making the out come
of the model have moved from a speculative level to a level
where decisions have been made by an increase of knowledge
of the topic.
M. HANK HAEUSLER DYNAMIC SURFACE GENERATED OUT OF MOVEMENT IN A MOVIE CLIP BASED ON DIFFERENT COLOUR INFORMATION OF PIXELS
material as possible and to become as strong as necessary
to perform their function”. Contemporary computation
techniques such as Bidirectional Evolutionary Structural
Optimisation (BESO) and the Soft-Kill Option (SKO) are tools
for removing low stress regions and adding material to high
stress areas of a 3D digital model under specified loading
conditions including consideration of dimensions, topology
and material properties. These evolutionary algorithms
produce forms that demonstrate the Axiom of Uniform Stress
and exhibit complex geometries reminiscent of naturally
occurring structural systems. This methodology can be applied
at numerous scales and enables the evolution of optimised
macrostructures, microstructures and substructures suitable
for use in lightweight context-specific building construction.
The models on display demonstrate various possibilities
for engaging the BESO algorithm to generate optimised
architectural structural systems. Illustrated are potential macro,
micro and sub-optimisation schemas that can be applied to
achieve enhanced strength to weight ratio components that
combine a bionic elegance with functional and structural logic.
JEROME FRUMAR
When modern man builds large load-bearing structures, he uses dense solids; steel, concrete, glass. When nature does the same, she generally uses cellular materials; wood, bone, coral. There must be good reasons for it. Professor M. F. Ashby, University of Cambridge
Naturally occurring structures such as trees, bone, coral,
sponge, foam and bio-mineralised protist shells exhibit
flamboyant geometry that simultaneously negotiate several
environmental conditions with minimal energy and material
consumption. This negotiation of contextual factors achieves
a near uniform stress distribution throughout the structure.
The Axiom of Uniform Stress is a phrase coined by theoretical
physicist Claus Mattheck to describe “the tendency for all
self-optimising structures to make as economic a use of their
CONTEXT-SPECIFIC LIGHTWEIGHT STRUCTURES IN ARCHITECTURE
JEROME FRUMAR COLUMN
84
JEROME FRUMAR COLUMN RENDERS
JEROME FRUMAR COLUMN RENDERS
These models have been directly fabricated from a virtual
3D model using the Z-Corp Spectrum, a typical Solid
Freeform Fabrication (SFF) system. Prior to this recent
technology, these complex forms would have been very
difficult and time-consuming to produce. Although presently
limited to the industrial scale, SFF technologies also enable
direct manufacturing of functional end-use parts. Further
development in a variety of SFF technologies and materials
suggests a future ability to support the direct fabrication
of functioning large-scale components that could be suited
to the architecture, engineering and construction industries;
particularly for the crafting of geometrically complex
building elements.
The models represent the first stage of an ongoing
research project that explores contemporary and emerging
manufacturing processes to economically fabricate
geometrically complex structures at the scale of architecture.
The complexity of evolutionary-based structures amplifies
the need for clear and precise 3D representation in the form
of both virtual and real models. Traditional 2D representations
can no longer be used to accurately communicate concepts
and modifications. In this exploration, physical models are
an integral part of the design development/evaluation process
for concept communication between designer/architect,
engineer and manufacturers. Throughout this investigation
it is envisaged that SFF models will play an increasing part,
culminating in a digitally fabricated “investment” to be used
as an indirect manufacturing tool for casting a context-specific
steel structural column.
JEROME FRUMAR COLUMNS
used as a rule that influenced the component geometry.
For example, proximity to a projection locator triggered a
closed cell type, whereas proximity to an area of gathering
determined cell colouration. The final component is a
combination of responses to each of the 7 different locators.
This digital process was informed by constant physical
modelling and testing, during which connection details,
material properties and fabrication limitations were explored,
understood and later translated into code.
As a field, these components act collectively to express
properties of porosity, colour, and the interplay of light and
shadow. This collection of properties generates a moment in
a continuous state of change. It demonstrates the potential to
generate new material properties by assemblage, and shows
this to be practical state of the art design and prototyping
technologies.
PAUL NICHOLAS AND TIM SCHORK
TOO MANY COOKS MAKE THE BROTH
This project was undertaken by MESNE in collaboration with
7 Interior Design students at RMIT University. The series of
models represents research into the synthesis of generative
design processes and contemporary fabrication techniques.
At the core of this research is the idea that models are at
the centre of both the digital and physical design process.
By developing strategies for synthesising the abstract model
(the code) and the physical model (the materialisation) they
operate as generative and synthetic tools. The models should
be understood as representational of this working method,
rather than being ‘bonsai architectures’, or small scale
representational versions of the final built outcome.
The models were produced for an installation for an exhibition
at RMIT. Two sets of models were presented, a 1:1 prototype
of a screen and a series of exploratory models in form of rapid
prototypes. Each model is unique and consists of an array
of non-standard components, which were generated via a
collaborative digital design process, in which multiple authors
collectively designed a system written in computer code, that
was able to produce multiple outcomes. Much like the same
recipe can produce 500 different types of Spaghetti Bolognese.
Because of this, there is no single author to the outcomes
- which are very tasty nevertheless!
After establishing a common and generic component based
assemblage, each author investigated material and fabrication
constraints as well as a particular area of individual design
interest, such as colour, porosity and light transmission. These
were coded as a set of instructions that defined the way
components adapted to the environmental and programmatic
requirements of the exhibition, which were placed as locators
on the site. The proximity of each cell to these locators was
SCREENRESOLUTION: PROTOTYPES MADE FROM NON-STANDARD COMPONENTS Makes 1 Cardboard Screen And 4 Rapid Prototypes
PAUL NICHOLAS AND TIM SCHORK DETAIL OF CARDBOARD SCREEN
88
PAUL NICHOLAS AND TIM SCHORK 1:1 CARDBOARD PROTOTYPES
PAUL NICHOLAS AND TIM SCHORK 1:N RAPID PROTOTYPES
INGREDIENTS
7
2
1
80m2
1kg
500ml
PREPARATION TIME
1
fresh and enthusiastic students
carefully selected tutors
Rhinoceros 3D™ modelling software
Microsoft Visual Basic™
wiki
cardboard, sliced
plaster
infiltration glue
semester
PAUL NICHOLAS AND TIM SCHORK RAPID PROTOTYPES FOLDING SEQUENCE
STAGE 1
Select a structural surface pattern that occurs in nature and
investigate it for their underlying formative geometric rules and
explain them in English.
STAGE 2
Replicate these rules in form of a set of instructions written
in Visual Basic to generate a 2D model in the 3D modelling
software Rhino. Continue adding information while stirring
thoroughly.
STAGE 3
Completely cover a NURBS surface with your code and let
it rise into 3D. Expand and reduce, taking into account the
physical limitations and constraints of cardboard. Fold these
constraints into your code, until code and cardboard model
are combined synthesised. Place some cardboard in the laser
cutter, and built a prototype. Test vigorously.
STAGE 4
Select an area of design interest and develop a strategy
through which a generic component can respond.
STAGE 5
Compile your code into functions and place them in a common
script library that is accessible to everybody.
A ‘script’ – or simple software program – was written which
automatically generated a simulation of pleating inside the
3D virtual space of the computer model. Various inputs could
be fed into this script, including the density of pleats and the
shape of the surface they were to follow. Numerous design
options were explored by varying these inputs and evaluating
the results in 3D space in a simulation of the traditional process
of trial and error.
Once a desirable outcome was arrived upon, physical models
were then produced both as a way of exploring the real
qualities of the computer-generated form, to demonstrate
the buildability of the proposal to the competition jury.
The first model made was a 3D wax print. A 3D digital
model file was emailed to a rapid prototyping workshop,
and a physical facsimile was delivered back to the office
a few days later. In many ways this was the least valuable
of all the models produced. The translation between digital
and physical is almost too seamless, there is no hands-on
intervention, so that no accuracy is lost, but equally no
understanding is gained.
RORY HYDE
In addressing the exhibition theme of the role of models in the
design process, what is interesting about the way models were
used in this project, is that they were produced directly from
a central digital model.
Working design models are traditionally used as a way to
explore a design concept through making, by cutting out
pieces and sticking them together as you go, using judgement
and evaluation while testing subtle variations. In contrast,
the models presented here have been produced using specific
templates or 3D prints where little or no interpretation
or improvisation is possible.
These models were produced during the competition phase
for a new home for the Monash University Museum of Art in
Caulfield by BKK Architects. The concept for the scheme was
to interrogate the repetitive glass façade of the existing 1960’s
office building that the new space was to be inserted into. The
language of pleating was adopted as it has a repetitive quality
which could be integrated into the rhythm of the existing
structure, allowing the intervention to appear both respectful
and disruptive of the existing building.
DESIGN MODELS FOR BKK ARCHITECTS MUMA GALLERY COMPETITION 2006
RORY HYDE DESIGN MODEL FOR BKK ARCHITECTS MUMA GALLERY COMPETITION 2006
92
RORY HYDE DESIGN MODEL FOR BKK ARCHITECTS MUMA GALLERY COMPETITION 2006
On the other hand, making the card models forced us to
engage with aspects of the project which we may not have
by working purely digitally. Building a complex 3D surface
out of 2D material requires a process that is very similar to
the process of describing this geometry for the real building.
Ignoring issues of engineering, and to a certain extent
structure, the principles of building out of card and building
out of glass are the same, in that they are inherently scaleable.
In this instance, another script was written which layed-out,
numbered and tabbed the pleated panels, automatically
producing a set of highly accurate 2D templates which were
then cut out of card and glued back together to produce the
computer generated form in physical space.
Through this process and others like it, the use of models
in design goes beyond the traditional role as medium for
formal exploration, and begins to inform the very specific
and concrete realm of construction.
RORY HYDE DESIGN MODEL FOR BKK ARCHITECTS MUMA GALLERY COMPETITION 2006
and other idealised notions at the outset of the design process
and instead asked that they focus on data driven environments
in which topographic form making is informed by varied
dynamic systems associated with the occupants and activity.
This methodology is more closely aligned with bottom-up
thinking allowing for complex interactions between parts,
whilst bringing together disparate entities. Understood
as a flexible system it is able to respond to and influence
its own effects. Such methodology runs counter to traditional
systems in which the linear process of hypothesis, analysis
and intervention are understood as being less adaptive and
responsive to data input.
The use of metric and observational data is advocated in
order to generate specific spatial and surface descriptions
that affect, interfere and overlap, creating intensities that are
responsive to the changing nature of information. Importantly
the process is designed to realise multiple virtual potentials
generated from the lived traces of inhabitation and occupation.
These include such things as kinetic responses to shifts in
activity or occupation, as well as connections realised through
interference and interaction. Moreover complex interrelations
between operational parameters and material form derived
from localised climatic conditions, suggest that form
generation is not anticipated but is formative.
Maps and diagrams are used to describe interior surfaces
as a spatial presence of occupational activity. The degree
to which objects and people structure the environment by
casting shadows, leaving imprints or impressing themselves
on or through objects and each other, evolves a building
typology responsive to socio-spatial climate. Specific conditions
including dead zones, overlaps, and interferences contribute
to a diagram not unlike ‘hertzian’ space identified by Anthony
Dunne and Fiona Raby. While these researchers focus on
the spatialisation of electromagnetic waves radiating from
electronic objects, this experiment reads interior environments
as connected space, bounded not exclusively by ‘construction’
but as a spatial delimitation that contributes to the making of
surfaces. That is, differentiated spaces providing for individual
MARK TAYLOR
This studio is focused on conducting design research through
digital and physical modelling. It is undertaken not to reify
‘modelling architecture’ or ‘modelling ideas’ in a universal
sense, but examines the performance of an architectural model
when ideas are yet to emerge from local climate conditions.
This is a conscious decision based on a desire to test whether
the ambiguity of traditional conceptual models can be
overcome by engaging directly with modelling as process.
That is, whether it is possible to model ideas as though they
are real rather than a representation of something yet to
appear, and if so can the process provide ‘real-time’ feedback
on effects and outcomes such that they inform design decision
making. With emphasis on learning through researching
properties, effects, combinations of form and material, and
software programming, modelling is understood as an iterative
process rather than finished ‘presentation’; a process that
may enable students to move beyond traditional reliance on
sketches and verbalisation to communicate concepts and ideas.
For this experiment conducted at Victoria University
Wellington, New Zealand we invited students to suspend
belief in design dependent on ‘concepts,’ ‘metaphors’
HERTZIAN SPACE: MODELLING SPATIAL PRESENCE
INTERIOR OF ‘POD’
95
occupation, use and preferences of inhabitants are directly
informed by social occupations. Boundaries become a relative
notion determined by individual and collective inhabitation,
and localised temporal states.
To accomplish this site data is gathered and recorded through
photographs, sketches, notes, and audio/video interviews.
Early analysis through participation, site observation and
documentation of variable and changing data on such things
as the body’s occupation of space, placement of artefacts,
operational requirements, environmental factors and so on, are
used to re-describe an interior lining that is a specific rather
than general spatial envelopment. Moreover photographic
documentation reveals that many places are simply furnished
generic commercial spaces with equipment necessary for
their specialisation organised in an ad hoc manner. For
example the full body massage suite captured in a series
of extraordinary covert images, depicts the uncontrolled
accumulation of equipment and paraphernalia suggesting
a dissonance between space and function. With little room
to get changed or hang clothes, the client’s body is literally
forced onto the only remaining free space – the massage table.
Any sensuality of the semi naked body or intimacy between
form and materials is lost, an observation noted in other site
visits concluding that generally these interiors are conditioned
by the existing functionally-neutral environment of ‘generic
commercial space’.
Working from an initial conceptual design a small student
group worked collaboratively to examine and develop the
project through new propositions. To be effective the sharing
of information involved collective conceptualisation of the
design when there was both partial knowledge about the
design and the mode of representation. To advance ideas the
group generated form by registering the body’s movement in
space as the massage is performed, and mapping how space/
surface is changed when the masseur’s body presses against it.
Initial physical experimentation with plaster of Paris and textile
materials was conducted through full size modelling against
the body. This included stiffening the textile to provide a solid
form where it came in contact with the body leaving other
material loose, and vice versa. At the same time a simple 3D
Studio Max™ model was used to simulate deformable surfaces
and their interaction with a digital body. But despite the
FULL-SCALE ASSEMBLY OF PHYSICAL EVA MODEL USED TO TEST BEHAVIOURAL CHARACTERISTICS OF ONE ‘STRUCTURAL’ ZONE
(FROM LEFT TO RIGHT)
“INVERSE MODELLING”
BIPED ANIMATIONS DEFINE THE INNER ‘RELAXED’ AND DEFORMED ‘STRETCHED’ SURFACE ENABLING THE OPTIMISATION OF ‘STRUCTURAL’ ZONE AND DEVELOPED PATTERNS
OCCUPATIONAL ACTIVITY USED TO DEFINE TOLERANCE VOLUMES AND MATERIAL ARRANGEMENT OF ‘POD’
provided the data for a subsequent feedback process that
included biped animations. Two bipeds animated with
appropriate movements related to ’moving centres’ and
positioned relative to the massage table defined the inner
‘relaxed’ and deformed ‘stretched’ surface. This time the
generation of the pod using a digital ‘drape’ technique resulted
in a direct relationship between curvature and body position,
visualized through density of faces indicating greater curvature.
Optimization of the form enabled the development of one
‘structural’ zone through other software packages to be
flattened into developable strips for pattern cutting. Full size
physical form was constructed using Ethylene Vinyl Acetate
(EVA) foam with three-dimensional shape defined by the
patterns resulting in a non linear articulated surface.
Approaching design through collaboration and modelling as
the primary instrument of enquiry, rather than representation,
has an impact on working methods and outcomes. Of
importance to the group is to move away from more
traditional approaches to creating a design before it is tested
through construction and materials, as this method reduces
potential for creative input. We found that to test open ideas
through modelling requires shorter, more frequent iterations,
a process that demands more frequent communication
between collaborators; a process that leads to more cohesive
understanding of the issues by all members of the design team.
realistic rendering appearing tangible, there was no material
possibility nor any physical experience associated with this
representation. This type of testing forces the limitations of
the various software to be revealed, which is set against the
backdrop of the difficulty that comes with full scale physical
modelling conducted in a studio setting.
Further design data came from considering massage practice
itself and the position of the masseur relative to the client’s
body, rather than any preexisting homogenous space. Two
students of differing physical stature simulated massaging a
client, documenting the process through a series of digital
images that were then used to generate a description of the
body moving through space. Head, shoulders, lower back
and feet position were imported into a Sketchup™ model.
These parameters were used to define tolerance volumes
accommodating data from both students’ simulation. The final
digital model was generated from a series of U-lofts made
from vertical/radial sections through the bubbles.
To account for membrane transparency and determine
deformable surface areas from areas of rigidity, the students
returned to the positions of both ‘masseurs.’ From this data the
enclosing membrane followed the profile of the inner (smaller)
body, and stretched to accommodate the larger figure. That is,
when the head, lower back and feet press into the membrane
the surface expanded. Elasticity was achieved by reducing the
thickness of material and introducing cuts and folds.
During this process the problem of excess information is very
real and at times seems to overwhelm design decision making,
opening data and material to intuition, interpretation and
evaluation as architecture. That is, different forms of data
whether ‘read’ through photographic images, measured on
site, or obtained through focused group interviews needs
evaluating and actualised through modelling. And since there
is no traditional ‘concept’ acting as partí, data is not edited
until all relational constructs are explored, thereby allowing for
architectures that are unknown and impossible to preconceive.
Following completion by the student group a small research
grant enabled further progression into full size prototype.
During this period the final 3D Studio Max™ digital ‘pod’ PHOTOGRAPHIC IMAGES USED TO
APPROXIMATE FEET AND BACK POSITIONS
This experiment was conducted at Victoria University Wellington, New Zealand by Mark Taylor and Mark Burry.
Mark Taylor is a Senior Lecturer at Queensland University of Technology, Australia. He is the guest-editor of Surface Consciousness the March/April 2003 issue of Architectural Design and co editor Intimus: Interior Design Theory Reader, 2006 published by Wiley-Academy.
Mark Burry is a visiting Fellow at VUW. He holds an Australian Research Council Federation Fellowship and is Director of RMIT’s Design Institute and state-of-the-art Spatial Information Architecture Laboratory. He is also Consultant Architect to the Temple Sagrada Família.
The studio tutors gratefully acknowledge the ARCH 412 students and research assistants Matthew Randell and Elizabeth Chaney.
Original author ‘full body massage suite’ Yijing-Xu
Collaborative design team: Diana Chaney, Matthew Randell, Yi Wen Seow
project was understood in new ways that cannot be achieved
in the absence of this iterative process1.
Over the past few years Terroir have cautiously integrated
digital modelling into the design process. Through my
involvement in SIAL’s ‘embedded research’ program the
firm as a whole has gained a greater awareness of the
implications of expanding the conventional toolset of an
architectural designer. This experimental stage has challenged
the office with ideas about how and why this form of
modelling may enhance or indeed impede the ideation
design process.
Early experiments gave us confidence in the potential
of the digital where a digital model/animation resulted
in a conceptual breakthrough in a project and presented
a way of seeing the project’s concept with greater clarity.
These modelling explorations enhanced contained design
exercises in the ideation process and we became aware that
certain digital techniques were not about to become formulaic
or their usefulness easily reproducible.
SARAH BENTON
My experiences with SIAL’s ‘embedded research within
architectural practice’ program offers many opportunities
to explore the role of models within a forward-looking
architectural firm and within a context of academic post
graduate study in Architecture. A particular interest of mine
is the introduction of digital modelling into practice and what
digital tools offer an enterprising and respected firm, especially
one such as Terroir which is frequently involved in professional
interchanges across different Australian states. This following
essay explores the specific nature of Terroir’s use of models
and how models have extended and further facilitated
innovative structures of practice and communication that
are specifically associated with the firm in the public eye.
‘Terroir began as a conversation between 3 people and
the model emerged early on as a tool for giving material
form to ideas emerging from that discussion’. We reached
the conclusion (at HomoFaber 2006) that physical models
were conceptual and sought to capture an idea rather than
to represent a building. We found they related closely to our
conversations (words) and diagrams (lines). They allowed
for very rapid adjustments, and in making these models the
EXPLORING THE ROLE OF DIGITAL MODELS
TERROIR BURNS MACDONALD MODEL
99
(FROM LEFT)
FERNTREE ANIMATION FRAMES MAITLAND CITY BOWLING CLUB
So again we faced the question of what exactly is the benefit
of the digital media to our design process. After focusing
more closely on how we design we became aware that media
can be far more than merely tools to be deployed for already
determined ideas. Rather media can begin to be interactive,
be understood as operative and play a role in shaping our
intentions. Thereby, whilst Terroir design remains driven
by overarching ideas that result from collective conversation
and that these are held as primary, the role of the model, both
traditional and digital, can play a part in working up the idea.
For example in a project for a New National Library
in Prague, ideas began through gathering a comprehensive
and wide ranging body of information about the project.
One of the first visualisations of the project was an abstract
speculative physical model that I constructed in response
to an idea about how the building could be an articulation
of a violent landscape rupture. This idea was based on the
team’s assumption that there needed to be a visual and
circulation link to the existing Prague Castle.
This physical model was complemented with a digital model
in which it was possible to work with a larger and more
accurate context. Through the digital model it could be seen
that the fall of the land and the circulation patterns through
it differed from our initial readings. The previous idea was
thereby built upon a somewhat distorted and contrived
understanding of the landscape and a debate ensued.
In Terroir, particularly in response to multiple people’s opinions,
the firm often works through ideas and models to look for the
best outcome. In the Prague project, the physical and digital
models were integrated into the conversation to assist at
points of crisis. Resulting from differing readings of the
site a contrary idea was put forth to build upon the site’s
immediate context; a park with a smooth velvet character.
Iterations of both of these ideas were modelled and compared.
Ideas about mysterious cases rupturing from below the park,
to house the archive section of the library, were added to the
mix. In the Prague competition the final design for Prague was
critically selected from this pool of many ideas and models.
The project’s final idea intertwined this mix resulting in
rupturing cases shielded under a velvety roof.
As the firm continues to integrate digital tooling into
the ideation process, it is becoming more necessary
to complement those digital tools and processes with
equally sophisticated physical modelling techniques.
The idea of the velvet parkland was modelled in a digital
simulation by locating control points across the site, applying
a surface to those points, and then modifying the smoothness
and fall of that simulated surface with the computer. Due to
the many controlling factors and the laborious nature of the
task the digital simulation seemed to suppress the potential
of the idea. On viewing the digital iterations the design team
was not convinced that we were gaining any understanding
into how such a material may want to operate. At this point
physical models were used to investigate the operation
of actual velvet material. These explorations were much
more convincing and the knowledge was taken back into
constructing the digital model.
In Terroir, where designing occurs during an email
conversation, representations of the digital models sit
alongside photos of physical models. As such the firm fully
integrates the traditional craft and more modern modelling
methods. In Terroir today the term model is used abundantly
and ambiguously to describe physical and computational
explorations. The final image of Prague was modelled in
the computer, rendered and then manipulated. It is both
a digital model that holds a high level of information and
an ambiguous image that presents a strong idea framework
but which could go on to be modified within the confines
of that idea framework.
The Prague competition called for a physical model to be
submitted. Having designed the building with an exterior
form with the characteristics of smooth velvet in a digital
model we faced the problem of translating that into
a physical form. Our first attempt produced an average
quality vacuum formed model. Seeing this result the team
looked for other methods.
In working up an idea a body of work goes into finding
and visualising the idea and an equally important body of work
goes into presenting that idea. If it is done well, the production
TERROIR PRAGUE LIBRARY COMPETITION ENTRY
of the representation can become a continuation of the
ideation process. With the time constraints of the competition
the team agreed to create a Perspex laser cut model. This was
not meant to directly mimic the images on the presentation;
rather by being abstract the presentation model maintained
a sense of a working model. It was meant to maintain a level
of ambiguity and thereby reinforce that we were presenting
an idea framework upon which the client and Terroir could
build on in the future.
To conclude these observations that I have made in reflecting
upon practice and the model, Terroir acknowledges that the
exciting thing about a working model is not accuracy and
beauty rather it is the understanding and discoveries that
happen through the process of making. Through modelling
our own ideas, or a team member’s idea, we can see that
a level of interpretation occurs. Only by making the ideas
can the Terroir design team see and interact with them.
This interaction can result in unexpected results and this
ultimately expands our ideation design process.
1 Blythe, R. (2007). Afterword: On Models. Terroir:
Cosmopolitan Ground. Terroir. Sydney, DAB Documents, UTS:
p164-165.
TERROIR PRAGUE LIBRARY COMPETITION ENTRY
TERROIR PRAGUE LIBRARY COMPETITION ENTRY
Literature around architectural models was sparse until
the 1970s, despite the major role that they have played
in training and practice.2 The discourse, like the technology,
is still evolving and the Homo Faber project is an act of both
explicating the process and culture of the model and publicly
pushing that culture forward and outward by documenting
interactions with the model.
This essay takes this breadth, the ability to elude categorization
as a starting point for considering issues around the cultural
meanings and purposes of small scale representations of
buildings. The central focus will be on models, particularly
architectural models. Generally the words “model” or
“architectural model” will refer in this essay to models
used in a professional context, recently described by the
Royal Institute of British Architects as “design process models”3
to distinguish them from models of small buildings used
in education, religion, ethnic customs, craft activities, public
ceremonies, tourism, museums, retail, amongst many other
contexts. Other small buildings are also considered especially
the dollshouse, but also toys, ornaments, hobbyist’s homages
to known buildings, folk and vernacular artforms, elaborate
JULIETTE PEERS
Models are extraordinarily versatile. They enable archietects to convey a range of information about a project, which may be factual, or conceptual, or both. They are also like drawings, a rich and vivid means of expression offering an infinite range of possibilities.1
The omniferous nature of the model attested in recent
literature such as Modelling Messages by Karen Moon,
makes it hard to grasp in analysis despite its unequivocal
presence in professional life. Any discussion of the model
– even before considering digital options – can be frustrated
by its very plurality of options. What does the model actually
mean, represent and do when we step back and refuse to take
its naturalness, its expectedness, for granted? If considering
the meanings of the model, especially in a historic context,
one is thrown back onto a set range of sources and examples.
BEAUTY AND BRAINS: THOUGHTS AROUND MODELS & MINIATURE BUILDING FORMS
craft and bespoke objects, but also mass produced items such
as construction sets or published printed material such cross
sections or cardboard buildings for home assemblage. These
divisions are not arbitrary. A miniature building may fall into
more than one of these categories, whilst still retaining a role
in design practice. Miniature buildings can “shape change”
or perhaps more particularly function change in different eras.
A functional model from a studio may end up, centuries later
as an expensive museum piece. A discarded competition entry
can finds a new life as a family dolls house. The context of
user and audience may also determine the current function
of a miniature structure. Even a small building once used to
forecast the final outcome of an actual building, may, when
the large building is destroyed, be the only tangible reminder
and memorial to the building that had previously supplanted
it. The “shape changing” polyvalent model is not so much
an alien from elsewhere as a throwback from another, pre-
enlightenment era, a representative of what Barbara Stafford
called the “baroque sciences”.
104
The model’s ability to be everything, to conduit to larger
and broader concepts is not simply a question of the lax
scholarly paradigms of overviews like Modelling Messages,
which explore a very wide range of possible formats in both
concrete and allusive modes. This same quality of plurality
almost to the point of negation of meaning is seen in an early
text from a known heyday of the model in professional life:
the 1920s. Percival Marshall’s Wonderful Models4 is almost
meaningless in its liberal definition of what a model can be.
The remarkable list that forms its notably unwieldy subtitle:
The Romance of the World in Miniature and a Complete
Encyclopaedia of Modelcraft – Comprising the Construction
and Use of Representative And Working Models in Advertising,
Architecture and Building, Civil And Mechanical Engineering,
Naval Architecture and Railway Engineering and the
Application of Electricity to their Operation: Also the
Romance of Historical Models and the Modern Development
of Model Engineering as an Aid to Invention, as a Recreation
and as an Essential Element in Education demonstrated how
the model is a practical facilitator of new and effective thinking
in many different contexts. Here the model is an essential
part of modern architecture and the modern adventure of
unanalylitcal optimism. Here models can be both proscriptive
and suggestive, conservative/fixed but undeniably liberating.
This plurality hints at the model’s seductive quality of
a thought captured and made tangible – herding cats or
catching dreams. Marshall validates many types of models
from the playful to the scientific, from the passive to the
mechanical, from the illustrative to the abstract/allusive.
He sees the model as informing and supporting a number
of professions and ascribes seemingly limitless merit to
models in modern life.
Furthermore he believes that models demonstrate their intrinsic
merit by various means and in various contexts. They can
derive their unique power from this diversity and universality.
Whilst for Marshall models do on occasion “excite wonder due
to “merely … clever craftsmanship” or “the patience of the
maker”5, and thus display the fetishised detailed craft skills,
over-close focus and elaboration, that Susan Stewart6 would
later claim in one of the few philosophical considerations of
the miniature as a state of mind and aesthetics, as integral
to the small scale. Equally models can be shorthand to the
“cleverness of conception”.7 Thus models and miniatures
may be provisional, temporary and not always necessarily
dominated, rendered trivial, by the fetishising of their own
extreme physical properties, as suggested by Stewart.8 For
Marshall, valid models can cost only a “few shillings” and cut
to the quick of a “basic principal” as much as provide detailed
illustration. However the text is unequivocal in its emphasis
on the importance of models of all types to formulating and
conceptualising advanced research and provisional thinking.
They are tools of effective experimentation and prediction,
allowing for proto-typing and the collection of “valuable data”.
They also allow for “succinct communication when the original
is too large for convenience”.9 These skills ascribed by Marshall
to the model of précis, economy, summation, overviewing,
and communication are both widely-accepted signs of
professionalism and supremely modernizing. Moreover
they are still valued generally in many workplace contexts
and pubic culture as an indicator of efficiency and ability.
The publication date, 1928, of Wonderful Models reminds
us that the model has flourished at certain periods.
These periods when the model is prominent often can
be characterised as periods of transformative and speculative
thought. The Renaissance and early modern period provide
a number of 3D constructions, which also are repositories
for cognitive functions. They include the Wunderkammer
and its miniaturized derivatives the dollshouse, and the
Wunderschränke. They provide a blend of metaphor, creativity,
technical skills and practicality. They were quintessential
examples of what Barbara Stafford called Devices of Wonder11
– tools of a pre-modern science that was capable of extremely
complex processing and cognition around serious ideas and did
not shy away from big picture issues such as the nature of the
world and the multiple relationships of its many constituent
parts. However unlike modern science, Stafford’s pre-modern
sciences did not cut themselves off from the emotions,
creativity, art and artifice. They even freely hybridised
themselves with spectacle, illusion, performance, mysticism
and downright fraud. A thread of educative popularism also
distinguished these professional knowledges from those of
the later eighteenth century and onwards. Thus there was
great emphasis upon visual explication, concrete demonstration
and even self-guided exploration of intricate physical objects.
These objects were not mere toys; they brokered users
who were active and informed. Play was a test/extension
of given capabilities and understandings. Stafford also notes
that modern digital technologies have jumped over post
enlightenment science to share the rich and almost random
imbrication of seriousness and pleasure, entertainment and
functionality of pre-modern science, as well as its potential
to take up any given position on the spectrum between
utilitarianism and fancy.
In this context I am fascinated by the dollshouse/architectural
model interplay.12 This is a relationship replete with significant
chasms of male/female serious/trivial meaningful/vapid.
Associated with this anxiety, the conventions that uphold
belief in the demarcation of child and adult cultures as an
appropriate cultural value have also delimited the possibilities
of discussing dollhouses in relation to architecture. For some
Miniature buildings can “shape change” or perhaps more particularly function change in different eras. A functional model from a studio may end up, centuries later as an expensive museum piece. A discarded competition entry can finds a new life as a family dollshouse. The context of user and audience may also determine the current function of a miniature structure.
the dichotomies are so broad and obvious as to negate any
possibility of a relationship, but there are cogent historical
links between the two and the schism between the two is
less finite than suspected. Historically the architectural model
has interacted with the dollshouse, especially if the dollshouse
is read as an exploration and meditation upon social life within
the constructed environment, such as in the complex dolls’
village Mon Plaisir commissioned by the Princess Augusta
Dorothea of Schwarzburg Arnstadt from 1704 onwards.13
Discarded architectural models have sometimes ended up
as dollshouses. The best documented example is a model
submitted for the possible design of the Radcliffe Camera
by Nicholas Hawksmoor in 1734. Unsuccessful as an
architectural proposal, it was used as a dollshouse in the
Dillon family until it was finally presented to the Bodleian
Library in 1913.14 One point of difference claimed in a major
text on dollshouses between the model and dollshouse is that
the former “does not open”.15 This assertion can be disproven
by the many architectural models that reveal the relationship
between inner and outer spaces or that document inner
treatments as well as exterior. Karen Moon illustrates a model
from 1746 with an open front and a series of three sided
rooms that is identical to a dollshouse, as well as a military
model of a fortress: the Tour Martello 1836 that opens like
a dollshouse.16
Both dollshouse and architectural model exist as vivid
testament to the enlightenment’s splitting of head and
heart, their imbricated function now rigidly split between
the rumpus/family room and the studio. The dollshouse,
relegated around c.1800 to the nursery, and losing its
individualised, architectural presence, found a secure,
but utterly irrelevant, role in the new world of masculinised
intelligence, whereas the architectural model temporarily
lost prestige as a professional tool.17 Large scale treatment
of details of the decorative schemes of building – which
could even include one to one constructions of small parts
of the façade in situ, even outdoors, as much as complete
representations of buildings, were a format that flourished
in the nineteenth century. In their capacity for interaction,
for welcoming touch and rearrangement, for opening out
and exposure the dollshouse and architectural model are
linked. Other forms of miniature buildings such as the ex
post facto modelling by amateurs of architectural icons as a
demonstration of diligence18 or elaborate representations
of buildings in porcelain, glass or precious metals with closed
inviolate surfaces invite far less interaction and speculation
than either the dollshouses or the architectural model.
The hobby of building miniature representations of known
buildings certainly testifies to the public appeal of architecture.
In their overt assertion of skill and concentration, they also
have linkages to older forms of trade education such as
apprenticeship and the guild system, when the masterpiece
was often a bravura piece of craftsmanship with little
functional rationale, such as miniature wooden staircases
leading nowhere that were a popular testpiece amongst
nineteenth century woodworkers or skeletal brass or fretted
wood cathedrals.
Whilst modelling never disappeared from architectural practice,
there seems to be periods when its role in the design process
attracts more professional recognition and inquiry. From
evidence of contemporary publications the second decade
of the twentieth century appears to have marked the beginning
of another period of flow tide for the model. This increased
validation of the model seems to also indicate changes in
paradigms of architectural language or the requirements made
upon architects and clients to respond to new technologies
and aesthetics. The model came to the fore in both explicating
unfamiliar and newly evolved stylistic vocabularies and formats
in a manner devoid of negative emotion and also selling with
a certain charisma and fascination. This importance of the
model as an eloquent plaidoyer for modernism is recognised
in original literature from the era of dawning acceptance of
modernism in architectural patronage and culture, as well as
in historical overviews of the model’s status in the twentieth
century.19 Kenneth Reid wrote in 1939 that models had become
a “necessity” in the wake of “the development of newer and
less familiar contemporary architectural forms”.20 In 1942 J.
Prince Nunn warned of the ease with which “the directness
and simplicity of contemporary architectural expression”
could be read by the untrained eye as “deceptively stark,
almost arid”21 when rendered in 2D, yet in modelled format
modern formats had greater eloquence. Marshall in his
Wonderful Models suggested that perspective models of urban
layouts, gave a better understanding of the spatial distribution,
contours and relationships, than a 2D drawn or written
document.22 Thus the model made new initiatives in town
planning more appealing and the benefits of new development
could be communicated more effectively to counter the
inherent emotional tendency towards conservatism.
The model was not only a recorder of ideas or a point of trial
and prototyping, but became part of an increased theatre of
visibility and performance around the uptake of modern ideas.
It actively expressed the crusading transformative energies
that were, by implication, an essential element of modernism
in many creative expressions. There is a twentieth century
corpus of photographs of architects posing in dramatic and
intriguing fashion with small scale versions of their buildings.
This oeuvre continues to the present day with images
of architects seemingly playing with their model, bending
down before it, reaching into it, as if it were a dollshouse.
A celebrated and relatively recent example features the model
for OMA ‘s sadly unbuilt Jussieu University Libraries, 1992.
The metaphor in these photographs not only seems to be
one of well-roundedness imbrication of play and work,
but a demonstration/realisation in visual terms through
gesture and implied narrative of action of the specialized level
of insight and skill that is read as a harbinger of professional
status. There is also a visual pun, a contradiction, involved
in seemingly rendering the skill and status of the professional
as artless and childlike, if the model is read as a toy, or to cast
the professional as god, towering over the world of his or her
creation, if the model is read as analog of the actual world.
Concurrently and seemingly on cue with the increased focus
on architectural models, there was a new adult non-toy interest
in the dollshouse.23 The catalyst appears to be an Edwardian
Anglo-Irish general, Sir Neville Wilkinson, who built a copy
of his wife’s English country seat in 1907 and then moved onto
developing a miniature showcase of late – and increasingly
establishment – elements of the Arts and Crafts style titled
Titania’s Palace, 1908-1922 neatly blending in the ascendancy
of English cultural heritage,24 but also the sense of fantasy
and faerie that is – via the early modern sciences – an urtext
of even the straightest architectural models. The 1920s and
1930s saw the building of a number of “adult” dollshouses,
many of them overseen by, or made for, women of high
social and economic standing.25 During the same era the
development of elaborate and enduringly popular architectural
toys – construction sets – which had been produced in earlier
eras with less emphasis on structural functionality and a
generally aesthetic and art historical approach,26 also testified
to the importance of miniature structures – real and speculative
– to upholding and extending the mythos of the modern
imperial and industrialised nation. Whereas the dollshouse,
made and decorated by and for adults, spoke perhaps more
of aesthetics, the detailing and decoration of buildings,
the social life and function around buildings, privilege and
genteel rituals of public life, its partner, the construction set,
referenced a different but no less important set of values,
the masculine themes of engineering and industrial progress
and foregrounded system, routine and interconnectedness.
Particularly with the highly developed products comprised
of elaborate series of function-specific components and equally
sophisticated ranges of outcomes such as Meccano,27 Erector
Set or Bayko, a nexus could be read between the probity and
responsibility of the individual and the structure and demands
of the well-governed modern state, as each small bolt and
plate – relatively meaningless in itself – could, through the
skill of the maker/designer, be combined to form a miniaturised
representation of the white man’s technological sophistication.
Yet the model may also be a familiar sign of a less than heroic
post-war commercial manifestation of the international style
and a debased watered down interpretation of the utopian
vision of architects such as Le Corbusier at particularly
a local and suburban level. We have all seen on display
a sad, somewhat dusty Perspex case with perhaps blond
Nordic wood, white enamel or matt silver aluminium fittings.
Inside to advise us of the future prospect is a cleancut, square
usually starkly black and white series of international style
towers or horizontal blocks with their concomitant plazas,
forecourts, walkways and terraces, garnished with trees
of gathered twigs with green spray painted foam foliage,
inhabited by small frozen plastic citizens clustering in groups or
stopped in mid-stride. In the last decade the Australian artist
Callum Morton has brokered an international reputation from
This increased validation of the model seems to also indicate changes in paradigms of architectural language or the requirements made upon architects and clients to respond to new technologies and aesthetics.
exploring the banality of the emptiness of expected rituals of
post war western townplanning and urban development, and
raising the spectres of popular fears of this particular subset
of architectural progress represented by models in the post
war era. Although the appeal of his work is not only about
hostility and rejection, it also references insider trading of the
architecturally informed and their respect for key and acclaimed
buildings and also the popularist blend of skill, intrigue and
education that Stafford identified in pre-modernist sciences,
indicating that not only the digital should be identified as the
heirs to mannerist and baroque science, but the hand-built
model remains a “device of wonder”. His lovingly rendered
reproductions of famous buildings are not only perfectly
finished and historically accurate, but fitted with soundtracks
and lighting effects. Thus these miniature buildings bleed into
memories of popular culture and films. Morton devises new
dramatic narratives for the implied residents of these miniature
buildings and thus raises questions about discipline boundaries
and functions. Are his models architectural commentary,
conceptual art, sculpture, an amusing novelty or all of these
things simultaneously? What messages are they giving to
a viewer. These celebrated miniature buildings prompt
questions about the role of architecture as a cultural narrative
and metaphor beyond practice, as well as issues about scale
and cultural significance. The meticulous and learned craft skills
of Morton’s artworks testify to the ongoing viability of the
model as a creative and aesthetic medium beyond professional
design development and places it at the highly visible celebrity
level of contemporary arts. The model has played a role in
fine arts in the later twentieth century, especially sculpture,
at least since Pop Art and possibly as early as the surrealist
Joseph Cornell whose sculptural boxes referenced dollshouses,
Wunderschränke, shrines, apprentice pieces and architectural
models.
As with the teens and interwar period, the 1980s also are
informative about the model. The model came to the fore
in a series of projects and debates exploring its function and
identity.28 This was partly due to the inherent qualities of the
model itself but also partly due to the extraordinary extension
at this era of the culture of debate and commentary around
architecture that is not necessarily related to the process of
fulfilling a specific commission. This culture of debate around
architecture partly unfolds amongst professionals, but is partly
a lay debate, and moreover it has continued without apparently
losing momentum to the present day and this debate also
extends into interests around design and an increasing
governmental and official exploration of the relationship
of design, new technologies and new media formats to
national political and economic development in a volatile
world. The enlightenment head is co-opting for its own
functional agendas the once despised heart of the feminine,
the childish, the primitive and of course the counter-
reformation. This process is rendered plausible because
architecture has been since the 1980s a driving metaphor
of cultural and intellectual life. Architecture is not simply
a function or a profession – it adds meaning and value,
even enchantment, to the public’s construct of their cultural
environment. Fantasy and speculation around architecture
is widespread far beyond architecture itself and has brokered
a new fascination and popular acceptance around the
contemporary built environment.29
Play in the sense of Homo Ludens30 – always the ghost
at the feast of Homo Faber, its twinned Other (and for some,
Ludens and Faber may be even inextricably entangled) was
quintessentially of the 1980s. There is an antic quality about
much the 1970s and 1980s design which often encompasses
an affectionate tribute to post modernist architecture, such
as Michael Graves’ tea service of 1983 for Alessi, entitled
Tea and Coffee Piazza, which referenced an imagined series
of pavilions. In the 1980s reduced scale representations
of architectural features, which were simultaneously to
be read as playful and as having a significant reference
to something larger, more serious and canonical, can be
tracked throughout diverse media. Quirky but intellectual,
architecturally informed cross-reference and quotation forms
an identifiable visual stream in 1980s design and applied
art. The phenomenon has vivid manifestations. Architectural
forms and images appeared across the decorative arts from
furniture to jewellery. They were matched by the popularity
of cardboard cross sections and models of architectural
icons as both a leisure time activity and also as a display
items in domestic and commercial interiors. Teapots, and
other domestic table wear in both ceramic and metal were
shaped as buildings. The Royal Institute of British Architects
and the Victoria and Albert Museum maintains a delightful
on-line museum of such examples from the collection of the
RIBA.31 The latter institution has proactively collected a wide
variety of 3D representations of buildings, including models
by celebrated firms and all manner of popular cultural items.
The RIBA’s open-mindedness about the potential identity and
functions of building models is persuasive on both cultural and
intellectual terms. They identify a number of functions of the
miniature building from tourism to religion to design process.
Yet plethoras of examples of small buildings do not overwrite
its ongoing relevance in practice. The comments around
model making proffered by the Poise students represent a
new generation of practitioners exploring the format and
discovering what it offers them.
“Models communicate a range of ideas, aesthetics, and
problems. They are also a good tool to test possibilities that
drawing and digital aids may not [help]. …They are amazing
tools in design. Allowing other people to see quite fast what
someone could only ever explain in a [longer] time. What can
be gleaned from 5 seconds of staring at a model is so much
more than any type of medium.32
Working with models … made me realise that … models are
a fantastic way to diagram. It also helped me think ‘bigger’ in
the sense that there are so many opportunities with models to
show different ideas.33
The dollshouse also engaged attention at this date, gracing
a much remembered volume of Architectural Design
commemorating an international dollshouse competition
in 1982/1983 completion held by the British magazine
amongst international architectural firms. Certain judges and
competitors were hampered in considering the physical and
conceptual format of the dollshouse by too rigid a conception
of the role of the dollshouse in relation to childhood.
Therefore it followed that the functions and responsibilities
that architecture and architectural objects associated with
childhood ought to facilitate were equally contained. These
narrow proscriptions then also limited the formal and design
possibilities open to the architect by suggesting that paying
due care to the expected norms of the dollshouse had already
set the boundaries of architectural choice and exploration.
Unlike real “architecture” the brief of the dollshouse – and toys
generally – by necessity ran along “tram-lines” of what they
are “expected to be”. In the words of architect James Gowan:
Finally the designer does not have a lot of license with a child’s
toy. There is, or was, a linked range: dolls’ house, [sic] Wendy
house, fort, farmyard, railway, building blocks, constructional
kits, theatre. Each represents its bit of a simplified outside
world. When the designer shifts off the “tram-lines” of what
a dolls house is expected to be he finds himself immediately in
the province of another toy.34
One notes that for Gowan the identity of the “toy” is
essentially mimetic, a reproduction of a slice of the “real”
world. This mimesis limits the speculative and forward
looking possibilities of toys in favour of order and clarity
of reproduction.
However another judge, architectural historian Bruno Zevi,
whilst he rued the strictly formalised and curtailed patterns
of thought frequently revealed through the competition,
delivered a dissenting minority report in which he pinpointed
the problem not as pertaining specifically to dollhouses
per se or the intellectual limitations and lacks of the smallscale,
but as an architectural issue, a failure on the part of both
architects and their clients.
I am against miniatures of traditional house types and,
in stylistic terms, against primitivist, vernacular, classical,
Post-Modern and eclectic. I am for progressive and imaginary
contemporary architectural thinking...35
Like a model, the dollshouse spurs Zevi onto an extended
frame of reference, generating further analytical thought
around the values of architecture. This function of catalysing
fluid and innovative thought around architecture matches the
freewheeling potential that was ascribed to the model in the
1980s “… as studies of a hypothesis, a problem or an idea
of architecture.”36
I do not want to heroicise the dollshouse because placing
classic examples of dollshouses as collected and made
by hobbyists today alongside models does indicate some
...the dollshouse, made and decorated by and for adults, spoke perhaps more of aesthetics, the detailing and decoration of buildings, the social life and function around buildings, privilege and genteel rituals of public life, its partner, the construction set, referenced a different but no less important set of values...
...small scale does not speak of closure, reduction and the culturally invalid, but a trajectory of possibility, excitement and openness.
distinct physical and intellectual lacks, such as unimaginative
use of materials and designs, but Architecture Design’s
competition suggests that some of these lacks are due to
hobbyists not wishing to challenge the accepted tropes of
dollshouse building. The frontality of decoration and clustering
detail and features and the repetition of a box like structure
that is not far removed from a display cabinet are typical
examples of lacks when placed against the more 360 degree
viewing point assumed by a model. However what is most
remarkable about the dollshouse is not so much its lacks or
architectural shortfalls, but the tenacity of the desire to affix
fictive architectural features onto what is essentially a display
box. In the 1983 competition, many of the entries fell into two
streams; firstly those that sought to replicate the expected idea
of the dollshouse as box cum mimetic building and secondly
those entries that sought to provide a radical exploratory
solution to the issue of building construction and spatial design
freed by “the absence of constraints which usually plague
architectural practice, namely those of a precise brief and
a fee-paying client”.37 A radical approach was often expressed
in the construction of the dollshouse by discarding the
firm outer walls of the box structure. The more exploratory
entrants were very similar to the ground breaking exhibition of
architectural models The Idea as Model of a few years earlier.
Dollshouses evoke the cultural anxieties that unfold around
smallness per se. For over a decade Susan Stewart’s On
Longing has been regarded as the key English language
theoretical text around the issue of physical size in written
and visual culture, standing as a must-quote academic
benchmark.38 Yet Stewart’s vision of the small-scale, when
put alongside architectural writings on models, is limited,
condescending and negative. She sees only one overall
trajectory of the miniature leading towards the artificial, the
effete, the over-formalised, the trivial, the limited. The small
ultimately deserves a predominantly scornful assessment.
The miniature offers a world clearly limited in space but frozen
and thereby both particularised and generalised in that the
miniature concentrates upon the single instance and not upon
the abstract rule.39
The miniature here erases not only labour but causality and
effect. Understanding is sacrificed to being in context. Hence
the miniature is often a material allusion to a text that is no
longer available to us, or because of its fictiveness, never was
available to us except through a second order fictive world.40
In the advertisements for, and catalogues of, miniature
articles issued by firms such as the Franklin Mint, the Concord
Miniatures Collections, and Federal Smallwares Corporation,
`period furnishings’, `storybook figures’, the `charming’,
the `picturesque’ and the `old-fashioned’ are presented
to a bourgeois public immersed in the discourses of the
`petite feminine’.41
These anxieties and lacks expressed around the small are
usually absent in architectural discussions of the model, which
can extend to acceptance of its playfulness beyond its use
value. Karen Moon views miniature structures – and not only
the obvious candidate of the architectural model – as deserving
more positive comment. For her the small scale does not speak
of closure, reduction and the culturally invalid, but a trajectory
of possibility, excitement and openness.
Models hold further attractions for architects. They free them
from the pressures of reality, the need for practicality or even
realism. They embody as Toyo Ito holds `a labyrinth of reality
and fiction’. Models can be singularly functional working
tools, but they also offer the opportunity to experiment
with imaginary ideals, impractical or unbuildable. They offer
creation without responsibility, a release from the real world.42
Few who write about architectural models have failed to
mention their mysterious appeal. Architects’ models are, after
all, miniatures and have been favourites at expositions for
centuries.43
Reducing the scale has the unaccountable effect of
concentrating and intensifying the model’s significance.
By the same account it also increases its value… The jewel,
like the model, holds value disproportion to its size.
Considerable amounts of money are spent on both –
the Great Model of St Paul’s for instance cost as much
as a three story house.44
Moon identifies equally positive qualities in small items and
structures that have no relationship to professional practice.
Miniatures “intrigue” even if non-practice based models
could be regarded by some as, in the words of Helen Buttery,
“the male equivalent of netting purses or embroidering fire
screens”.45 Moon does not seem fazed or threatened by
the hint of the meretricious or trivial in meaning or identity
that haunts Stewart’s value judgements. Nor does Moon
see any great difference – except of chosen physical format
– between male and female interaction with the small-scale.
“Battlefields and model railways have traditionally been the
male counterparts of the dollshouse generally preferred by
girls, and neither loses its charm for adults.”46 For Moon a lack
of practice-based functionality does not alienate professional
architects from the dollshouse, rather it is an “object, strongly
favoured by architects”,47 not the least because it offers
opportunities for “unencumbered play”.48
The long-standing modernist fear of the small clouds
Stewart’s discussion and informs her negative responses.
Modernism has traditionally kept faith with the large scale and
sweeping as expressing authority, maturity and insight whilst
The architectural model is a representation on a smaller scale than reality. It can some-times be fanciful embroidery over reality...
harbouring concomitant anxieties about the small as lacking
credibility.49 “Tininess in art has always been anathema to
modernists.”50 Despite her own (presumed) post modernist
stance, Stewart validates the big on clearly modernist terms as
revolutionary, boundary/paradigm-shattering, threatening to
the conservative and the encumbered. Whereas the miniature
promises a fetishised containment and order, the gigantic,
through the grotesque, takes its place amongst moments of
cultural becoming and extension, as in carnival and rituals of
inversion.51 “[T]he gigantic moves from the occupation of the
body’s immediate space to transcendence (a transcendence
which allows the eye only imperfect and partial vision) to
abstraction.” The display modes of the gigantic “ma[k]e
public”.52 “Just as we have emphasised the relation of the
miniature to the invention of the personal, so must we finally
emphasise the relation of the giant to the invention of the
collective.”53 On such terms the small and the miniature can
only fail to register. “For the system of signification works
by means of a rhetoric of significance; to be marginal to that
system is to be cast from the centre (authenticity, sincerity,
consensus), to live the abstraction of the secondhand.”54
As well as modernism’s concern that size does matter, the
association of the miniature with the child-like also cause
anxieties. In a broader context the material culture associated
with the world of childhood is seen as limited by precedent
and expectation. The significance of small buildings could be
delimited not only by their small scale, but by their association
with the intellectually limited world of childhood’s culture.
These anxieties around the small certainly have a cultural
basis. For example Japan apparently does not have the anxiety
about the small and the childlike expressed in Western culture,
according to Donald Ritchie. Whilst “in the West we are
admonished by the highest authority ‘to put away childish
things’”,55 by necessity of finite resources of available space,
Japan has to deploy the compact and miniaturised in various
disciplines, including architecture, at all opportunities to
provide for more people and their needs.56
There are also some intriguing contradictions when considering
the miniature which thread through professional literature.
If the small can be read by some theorists as a priori anti-
modern, if a post-enlightenment construct of modernity is seen
as a touchstone to cogent and mature thinking then this line
of thinking is seriously interrupted by the architectural model.
Whilst the status of the small has been read as ambiguous and
negative, this value system is overturned by the status of the
architectural model. The architectural model is a representation
on a smaller scale than reality. It can sometimes be fanciful
embroidery over reality, yet was widely believed – as discussed
above – in the early twentieth century to be an aid and an
ally in the cause of modernism and was frequently employed
as such. Stewart has made a vast generalisation when she
assumes that smallness invariably means banality, a suppression
and reduction of meaning and erasure of content. If the small
is believed to be devoid of all but the most ritualised and
stereotyped meanings, then working on a small scale can only
deliver a meretricious display of technique for its own sake and
offer nothing creatively or intellectually that can not be done
more effectively on a one to one scale. Yet this essay
has provided multiple examples of the small, the miniature
that have either a demonstrable cultural validity or have
a viable function in working life. Postmodernism contested
the truism that a functional purpose or trajectory towards
translation into the full-scale and real is the only plausible
The model has always had partly a state of liminiality sitting between these worlds of fantasy and factually-grounded.
identity of the model.57 Practitioners working today aver the
validity and richness of a non-functional relationship to the
small scale structure, untarnished by commissions or workplace
tasks.58 At personal and direct level, the model is cherished
– even in practice and especially in the context of selling
a project to a client or entering a competition – on account
of its theatricality and its charismatic qualities. A whole
range of skills from meticulous handwork to virtual reality
programming are deployed on behalf of the model and the
project that it represents. The attractions of the small scale
threaded through the catalogue essays of the first Homo Faber
catalogue Modelling Ideas alongside its exploration of the
role of models in the working processes of leading Australian
architects.
As said above the discourse is still evolving and there has
been little attempt to unpick – or document in detail the
mechanics – these fairly broad contradictions. This essay has
segued through a wide range of themes, set against a broadly
historical overview of architectural models. Rather than
attempting to force a firm resolution, the essay throws up ideas
to indicate possible affinities and resonances in familiar and
unfamiliar issues and across disciplines and contexts. It moves
freely through history, cultural commentary and ideas drawn
from professional architectural texts. If the essay has merely
set up its own series of convenient and fictitious strawman
arguments, its dichotomies of play and practice, male and
female, valid and invalid, large and small, dollshouse versus
architectural model, baroque versus enlightenment, emotions
versus analysis, ornamental artefacts versus practice models
versus toys, its selection of texts to quote, it has done so as
an act of textual modelling to indicate how these ideas could
sustain far greater scrutiny than is usually devoted to them.
One can contrast the anxieties tracked by Susan Stewart to
Stafford’s proactive embrace and exploration of the hybrid
and the adaptive. Stafford is post modernist to the degree
that she makes no overriding judgment about the mix of
intellectuality and emotional sensation that she tracks. Firstly
she indicates that it has a de facto validity in that these
elements have always been associated with the supposedly
rational intellectual workings of the Western European mind.
Secondly there is an implication that not only can we find
shameful (but engaging) skeletons in the genealogical closet of
modern analytical professionalism in the sciences such as the
public displays of dying birds (themselves indicative of myriads
of fictional doomed innocents in eighteenth century culture
from Clarissa Marlowe to Cecile de Varens to Greuze’s Girl
with a Broken Pitcher) deprived of oxygen to prove scientific
theories or the celebrity medical quacks and occultists of
the eighteenth century such as Alessandro Cagliostro, Franz
Anton Mesmer and Dr James Graham who promoted better
fertility (and more) if one slept in his magic “Celestial Bed”
that was the talk of London at his Temple of Health, but that
our concepts of knowledge have far more random, wayward
and essentially arbitrary basis than we like to believe, not so
far removed from these eighteenth century fantasies as we
smugly assume. The model has always had partly a state of
liminality sitting between these worlds of fantasy and factually-
grounded. It often is capable of marking a clear and relative
honest point of transition between one and the other, perhaps
even indicating that both these polarities are in fact closely and
variously connected.
This essay draws upon material presented at the 2007 SAH
conference Pittsburgh Pennsylvania April 2007 under a travel
grant from the Beverly Willis Architecture Foundation
FOOTNOTES
1 Karen Moon, Modelling Messages: The Architect and the Model, New
York: Monacelli Press, p 11.
2 Ibid, pp. 6, 18.
3 http://www.vam.ac.uk/vastatic/microsites/1240_buildings_in_miniature/
[viewed 2 August 2007]
4 Percival Marshall, Wonderful Models: The Romance of the World in
Miniature and a Complete Encyclopaedia of Modelcraft – Comprising the
Construction and Use of Representative And Working Models in Advertising,
Architecture and Building, Civil And Mechanical Engineering, Naval
Architecture and Railway Engineering and the Application of Electricity to
their Operation: Also the Romance of Historical Models and the Modern
Development of Model Engineering as an Aid to Invention, as a Recreation
and as an Essential Element in Education, London: Percival Marshall and Co,
1928, Moon, op cit, pp. 43-46, 81-82.
5 Ibid, p. 1.
6 Susan Stewart, On Longing: narratives of the miniature, the gigantic, the
souvenir, the collection, Durham (USA): Duke University Press, 1993.
7 Marshall, op cit, p. 2.
8 Stewart, op cit, p. 60.
9 Marshall, op cit, p. 2.
10 Ibid, p. 1.
11 Barbara Stafford, Devices of Wonder : From the World in a Box to Images
on a Screen, Los Angeles, CA : Getty Research Institute, c2001.
Artful Science: Enlightenment Entertainment and the Eclipse of Visual
Education, Cambridge Massachusetts: MIT Press 1994.
12 See Juliette Peers, ‘The Dollshouse as Architectural Fantasy and
Architectural Reportage: The Bratz Pad as Case Study’ SAHANZ 2005,
Celebration.
It’s a Small World? The contested cultural meaning of the small expressed
through narratives of miniature buildings, Contested Terrains SAHANZ
2006, Society of Architectural Historians of Australia and New Zealand 23rd
Annual Conference Perth Western Australia.
Tool, Fantasy or Document? Early Twentieth Century Dollshouses,
Unpublished Paper, Society of Architectural Historians Annual Meeting 2007
Pittsburgh Pennsylvania.
13 See “Baroque Doll’s World” http://www.deutschland.de/sw/
sw.php?lang=2&&sw_id=5 [viewed January 2007] Official “Mon Plaisir”
website with virtual tour of the houses http://www.arnstadt.de/content/
kulttour/monplaisir.html [viewed January 2007]
14 Jean Latham, Dolls’ Houses: a Personal Choice, London: Adam and
Charles Black 1969, p. 99.
15 Ibid, p. 188.
16 Moon, op cit, pp. 62, 74.
17 Ibid, pp. 38-43.
18 I would argue that though akin to architectural models, these buildings
have a rationale that is distinct from models that are used as a medium to
develop or test ideas or the models that invite interaction with their internal
and external structure from the dollshouse to the competition model.
Certainly the thinking through architectural construction and or innovation
has already happened in the completed and full sized original and the
documentary model as homage follows the precedent set by another
preexisting full scale construction.
19 Marshall, op cit, Moon, op cit, pp. 43-46, 81-82.
20 Writing in Pencil Points, 20 July 1939 qtd. in Moon, op cit, p. 45.
21 J Price Nunn, “Models and Their Making”, Builder 162 June 26 1942,
qtd. In Moon, op cit, p. 553.
22 Marshall, op cit, p. 296.
23 Peers, Bratz Pad, op cit pp. 292-293.
24 Wilkinson was the last Royal Herald of pre-independence Ireland
25 Peers, Tool, Fantasy or Document? op cit.
26 One could think particularly of the Richter bricks, a nineteenth century
German toy loved by children the world around that contained many parts
that were pre-designed to include architectural historical codes in their
decoration and shape. The unavoidability of revival detailing in playing with
the bricks firstly indicates the importance of the gothic and the classical
to nineteenth century culture generally and in particular the importance
of historic precedent and the sometimes free and anarchic mixing of these
precedents in German Imperial architecture. There were a number of
similar products. Such art historically-minded sets often contained detailed
plans to ensure that canonical rules were upheld, though the possibility
for subversive macaroni formats could never be precluded once the bricks
were in the hands of the domestic builder. One could contrast this language
with the machine aesthetic of Erector and Meccano or the Scandinavian
modernist neutrality of early Lego – recent Lego is commodified and tied to
function and periodicity in the wake of Mattel’s changes of the toy trade
in the 950s and 1960s, so that many Lego sets need to bought to gain a
versatile range of components.
27 Meccano itself has been co-opted by Richard Rogers for the model of
the Tomizaya Exhibition Space, Shibuya Tokyo 1990-1992. One notes that
Lego has been coopted by Polish sculptor Zbigniew Libera for his Lego
Concentration Camp 1996, which again indicates the capacity of small
scale buildings to speak of larger narratives and metaphors, particularly the
manner in which the construction set seems to rapidly expand to reference
concepts of the state apparatus and social structure and also the nexus of
architectural representation and art projects. The Lego Concentration Camp
was banned from the Polish Pavilion at the 1997 Venice Biennale, although
the New York Jewish Museum has acquired some elements of the series and
regards it to be a valid cultural and artistic metaphor and not necessarily
anti-Semitic. The Lego Concentration Camp also speaks of the normalising
of repressive hierarchies in many regimes even in the present day.
28 Moon, op cit pp. 21-29.
29 Claire Caroline and Robert Wilson (eds), Fantasy Architecture 1500-2036,
London: Haywood Gallery in Association with the Royal British Institute of
Architects, 2004.
30 Johan Huizinga, Homo Ludens, New York: Beacon Press this edition
1971.
31 http://www.vam.ac.uk/vastatic/microsites/1240_buildings_in_miniature/
[viewed 2 August 2007]
32 Timothy Massuger emailed comment to author 1 August 2007.
33 Diane Baini emailed comment to author 1 August 2007.
34 Qtd. in Andreas Papadakis, (ed.), Dolls Houses, London: Architectural
Design, 1983 p. 6.
35 Ibid p. 8.
36 Exhibition brief for The Idea as Model, qtd. by Richard Pommer, ‘The
Idea of “Idea as Model”’, Kenneth Frampton, Silvia Kolbowski (eds.), Idea as
Model, New York: Institute for Architecture and Urban Studies and Rizzoli
International, 1981p. 3.
37 Papadakis, op cit, Editorial p. 4.
38 Robyn Walton, ‘The Woman-Object’s Glorious New Clothes’, Colloquy,
11 (2006), p. 233.
39 Stewart, op cit, p. 48.
40 Ibid, p. 60.
41 Ibid, p. 60.
42 Moon, op cit, p. 22.
43 ibid, p. 70.
44 ibid, p. 73.
45 ibid, p. 73.
46 ibid, p. 70.
47 ibid, p. 70.
48 ibid, p. 22.
49 Ralph Rugoff, ‘Homeopathic Strategies’, in At the Threshold of the
Visible: Miniscule and Smallscale Art 1964-1996, New York: Independent
Curators Incorporated, 1997 pp. 11-12.
50 Ibid, p. 15.
51 Stewart, op cit, pp.106-107.
52 Ibid, p. 102.
53 Ibid, p. 164.
54 Ibid, pp. 164-5.
55 Donald Ritchie, The Image Factory: Fads and Fantasies in Japan, London:
Reaktion Books, 2003, p. 54.
56 Ibid, p. 54.
57 Peers, Bratz Pad, op cit, pp 291-293 and Heinrich Klotz, (ed), Post
Modern Visions: Drawings, Paintings and Models by Contemporary
Architects, New York: Abbeville Press, 1985
58 E.g. Andrea Mina, ‘Mina’ture: Why are Cuttlefish Tickled Pink?, in Burry,
Downton, Mina and Ostwald (eds) Homo Faber, Melbourne: SIAL pp. 19-23.
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