Models
ModelsÂ
Models
Only the fun ones
You can't do architecture school without doing models. I never really had any special thoughts towards models until I had to make like 20 to fill a project quota. At some point you kind of wonder, "am I just creating an expensive waste product?"
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A model CAN be art, but most of the time it isn't art, its just a sketch in 3D - and when its use is done, it has to go somewhere. Some students have a bonfire where they just burn their models as a form of therapy; I guess others have them stored in some model graveyard at their parents house or something.
Experience
The best parts of this model happened in spur of the moment decisions. Deciding to lose yourself to intuition in the creative process is a risky but rewarding choice.
This might be my favourite model. And to explain it is probably more work than its worth, but this is a piece that felt more like art to me; and I was very sad to take it down.
For some context
This is for the Studio where I had to submit a total of 20 models by the end of the term. The whole thing felt so stupid and counter productive to me because I knew it would add nothing to my actual project. It would just waste the very little time I had.
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So I just presented this model as a conglomeration of 10 models in one composition, and then presented a few other side models.
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I didn't meet the 20 model quota; and as I predicted, it wasn't that big of a deal.
Pressure to Know
A weird annoying thing that really got highlighted in this studio is how often you're expected to know exactly what you're going to present and exactly how your experiments will turn out before you actually do any of the work.
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There is very little room for following your curiosity and arriving at dead ends naturally. The whole thing is just a test of how well you can "control your outcomes."
Rather than being graded on how creative you can be, you're graded on predictable you can be. because its easier to capitalise on predictability than on creativity.
Whats that on top?
Timeline
Its a 3D Timeline
We were asked to create a timeline for the development of an area that was previously the home of a few Native American communities. (And then the European pillagers pillaged and wrecked etc).
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It got me thinking about how for many cultures (Native Americans for one), time is not a line at all; but something else, like a circle or a wave... or a branch.
Time Branches Off
To have time be a line, you would have to be intentionally tracing along either a certain chain of events or a certain person or groups narrative; and even then, a line would be forced.
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At this point my lecturer might have said something like "you don't have to get too deep with it just make a timeline and move on to the next item."
But Like
If school isn't the place to think through our new and troubling realizations, then where are we supposed to do it? Why has architecture school become a place where you don't have time to be creative? Why is it a place where you don't have time to be innovative? Why is it a place where you are punished, by bad grades or other penalties, for pursuing questions that you have no answer to?
Is this not seeing the Forrest for the Trees?
Consider...
What kind of Professional does this create?
Sometimes it feels like Architecture school is where your architecture dreams come to die. You're at your most hopeful when you know nothing about how the Industry works. And then you work so hard at projects you don't like at speeds that don't make sense, only to emerge with a degree and no idea what you just did.
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You become the kind of professional who "knows." You know that "creativity" is expensive, you know that you don't have time to be too thorough. You know that you don't have time for mistakes, and therefore you don't have time to take risks with something new.
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But what kind of depressing knowing is that?
Certainly in my case, I graduated after 5 years feeling like I really knew nothing. Not in the profound "what we know is a drop, what we don't know is an Ocean" kind of sense, but in the "If someone asked me to build them a shed right now I would panic" kind of sense. I should at least feel confident enough to build someone a really nice solid shed you know? Instead, I can draw them something on Revit.
By the way
I'm very much pro model
But I think the way we approach them now is one giant missed opportunity. As a design field we remain trapped in classical and colonial tradition; our model building hasn't gotten much more impressive than what they were doing in Renaissance Italy: in fact we've only gotten worse. Plus now we can just 3D print or Laser cut what we want, why are we still doing things the traditional way?
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And I can't be the only one who feels conflicted about adding to the piles of waste that are produced every year; a large percentage of which is construction waste. Nursing this kind of cognitive dissonance is exactly how we get leaders who talk about mitigating the climate crisis, but still sign off on the exploitative and extractive practices of Fossil Fuel companies.
Whats a better Model?
Thats an open Question
Theres no single answer. But consider, you have the opportunity to allow someone to experience an important feature of your design in real space and time. Or perhaps you're trying to help someone understand something about their project that a drawing can't communicate. Thats essentially all you're doing. Everything else is just flexing.
It doesn't have to be boring
It's a special opportunity
You're in a unique stage in the process where you get to create an immersive experience; make it memorable, make it rich, and then let it be dismantled or repurposed to something else. Even if something else is just; decomposition. If it can at least harmlessly do that, thats already a win.
Also
Very importantly
Don't waste your money
Be the Model you want to see in the World. ;)
