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Computers are to design as microwaves are to cooking.
~ Milton Glaser

MODELS

Three types of models are integral to the DTS Project House design and construction process: physical models, digital models, and mock-ups. All three types are built to both inform and further the design and construction process and document the architectural intentions. Models are used to convince the client what to build and show contractors how to build, both of equal importance to the design intentions. Models are built for their usefulness in designing and constructing the full-size building as mills studio’s primary interest in architecture is building – architecture only exists in the world when built.

Models are not architecture and only become ends in themselves if the building remains unbuilt. Models have both private and public functions which alter the languages of model design from the strictly abstract to the representational. The architectural team’s “study models” made to investigate and confirm the design implementation serve a private function and can thus be designed in a private language exclusive to the design team. Study models only serve a public function when the models are used to show the public the design process. Models can serve a semi-public function when intended to show clients, consultants, and colleagues the project design in order to contemplate and evaluate the translation of intentions into a building. The language of these models now has to be understood by professionals, but professionals not initiated in the architect’s shorthand. Models serve a public function when shown to project stakeholders, public agencies, competition committees, and the general public. If the goal with the public display is to gain approval and or extend architecture beyond the private realm of architects, a more understandable representational language is required.

Although not ends in themselves, models do have an aesthetic component. Models must be designed like buildings: to fulfill a specific purpose and convey general themes. Models must be designed to express a specific architectural form, specific materials, and a specific aesthetic and or designed to provide specific instruction. What works to express specific intentions at full scale does not always work at model scale so model design has to remember that the goal is to convey intentions, not duplicate the experience of the full-size building. Models must be designed to convey the architect’s passion for the specific design and for architecture’s expressive power. Models must convey the seriousness and significance of architecture.

Physical Models

Physical models and the making of physical models are useful in unique ways from digital models and help serve the following specific purposes:

1.     Understanding Site’s Topography

The physical cutting and buildings up of the site contours is one of the best ways to both “feel” and intellectually understand the physical characteristics of the site’s topography. Since the actual hand cutting of the contours is so impactful, mills studio’s choice is to build site contour models made up of additive cardboard layers instead of generating contour models by 3D printers from foam. The less efficient often leads to a deeper understanding. Building contour models at varied scales multiplies this understanding.

2.     Conceptual – Not Spatial

The size of the physical models in relation to the human body allows for a conceptual understanding of the design where scale, relation to topography, and how the project is perceived by the larger world is primary. The physical size of models makes abstraction necessary where the relationships of the parts, the relationship between building and site and relationship of building to context is made evident.

Physical models can make visible macro patterns that are not necessarily visible at micro scales. Since physical models are inherently more abstract and less concrete, they are the most pure representation of the concept and can serve as a constant reminder of the unembellished design intent. It is important to consistently look back at the physical models as a reminder of the conceptual agenda that all enhancements and elaborations should serve and must not overwhelm.

3.      Tool for Sub-Contractors

Models are still often the most understandable 3D representations for sub-contractors to understand the scale and scope of the work to be completed and the context in which the work will take place. DTS Project House models are used by the sub-contractors to help better understand the site logistics and sequencing required to complete the work.

Digital models

Making and using digital models provides both opportunities and dangers. One only has to evaluate if architecture is better since the widespread use of computers and digital 3D models, how the means of computers affects the ends of architecture, and what architecture the computer makes possible to see the opportunities and dangers. It is hard to imagine a design process with the computer leading to Frank Lloyd Wright’s Fallingwater, but easy to see the computer used to create Mies van der Rohe’s Farnsworth House. Digital models offer useful outcomes in three distinct realms: one artistic, one documentary, and one technical.

1.     Design

Digital models allow the opportunity to approximate the tactile and spatial experience of the project in order to help test and validate the expression of the architectural agenda and help others see and understand the design intent. But digital models are only an approximation at best and not a substitution for a clear architectural agenda and an understanding of how a modeled design intent translates into reality. Digital Models must not help the Architect develop or understand their architectural agenda but must only help and confirm the architectural intent is indeed expressed.

There is a real danger that the seductive images that the computer can model and generate define and alter the architectural agenda. Expressing in built form the computer’s capabilities is not an architectural agenda and must not be substituted for an architectural agenda. The architect must know what is real and not rely on the computer screen to tell them.

2.     Documentation

Digital 3D models provide great advantages for documenting how the architectural intent is to be constructed. Building digital models intended to generate construction documents forces the abstraction to become concrete. Producing a model used to produce 2-D construction drawings forces work at multiple scales and forces addressing micro decisions that are not always readily apparent and are not necessarily exposed in hand produced drawings. The digital model  exposes how micro decisions do and do not affect the whole. A well-constructed 3D model requires every joint, material thickness, and attachment method be considered and resolved. Constructing a digital 3D model is an efficient method to assure all details and aspects of the construction are intentional.     

Although digital models made for generating construction documents generally make concepts more concrete, 3D models can help clarify implementation of conceptual issues by easily isolating design elements and removing them from their context. Design elements and their components can be looked at and considered in any combination from any viewpoint at any scale. One can easily switch back and forth between isolation (part) and context (whole) to see how each affects the other, and switch back and forth between axonometric (concept) and perspective (perception).

Digital models allow efficient collaboration with consultants and integration of the work of the various disciplines. The fact that digital models allow efficient revisions to drawings can be both positive and potentially negative. The digital model should validate and confirm well considered design decisions without the computer but the ease of rapid changes to drawings makes it too easy to try multiple options not sufficiently considered before modeling with the computer. The computer should not lead the design process where the creation of architecture is reduced to play and reaction to the visuals on the computer screen. The architect must know what works in the real world and not rely on the computer screen to tell them.

Mock-ups

Full scale mock-ups of various aspects of the DTS Project House were constructed for the following useful purposes:

1. Test the Conceptual Design Intent

Full scale mock-ups test whether or not the conceptual design actually translates into the intended reality. Issues of actual effect, actual perception, and actual experience can only be tested at full scale where the size of the human body, the scale of the physical context, and environmental factors affect the human body’s and mind’s perception and experience of the finished building. Mock-ups are constructed to reflect actual orientations so that actual environmental conditions act upon the mock-ups. In full scale mock-ups the abstract becomes concrete.

2. Test the Impact of Alternative Sizes, Gages, Finishes

Full scale mock-ups are the only real way to test how minute changes in material sizes, gages, and finishes among other alternatives that affect actual perception and experience of the finished building.

3. Test Construction Sequencing and Protocols

Full scale mock-ups help expose how the construction process and conditions affect the actual perceptible and experiential results of the construction. The production of full scale mock-ups allows for the construction sequencing and protocols to be tested and refined until the desired design intent is achieved. The sequencing, protocols, and actual construction conditions all determine what marks are left and not left by the Sub-contractor which is critical to the

4. Confirm the Abilities of Sub-contractors

Full scale mock-ups are the only way to assure that the Sub-contractors are accurately interpreting the design intent and confirm their ability to achieve the desired design intent.

5. Practice for Sub-Contractors

Full scale mock-ups are the best way for Sub-contractors to practice and refine their protocols and ability to achieve the intended design result in the actual construction.

6. Basis for Evaluation of Construction in Finished Building

Full scale mock-ups, once approved after revision and refinement, serve as the basis for evaluating the achieved results in the finished construction.

Full scale mark-ups for the DTS Project House include Exposed Concrete, Gabion filled Stone Walls, Metal Rain Screen of “tower”, rusted metal panels, exposed structural connections / welds, cable guardrail assembly. Although not constructed specifically for the DTS Project House, full scale mock-ups or actual installations were reviewed and evaluated for all product selections. Full size samples of all materials, such as door and window sills, jambs, and heads, were used for construction detailing.

 While the model’s ultimate goal is to become architecture, models aren’t like art pieces because an art piece is at the final stage of the artist’s creation.
~ Michael Saee