Why models still matter

There is always a model workshop in a corner of our studio: cutting mats, card, balsa, foam and a laser cutter. With digital modelling tools so advanced, people often ask why we still make models by hand. Our answer is simple: when you look at a building on screen, you always see it from the angle and in the light you chose. A model on the table is seen by everyone with their own eyes, from their own height, walking around it.

Massing models are our fastest thinking tool in the first weeks of a project. Placing ten foam massing alternatives one by one on the same site model to compare them takes less than an hour. At the first Technopark Campus meeting, the client and user groups discussed together, over three alternative models, where the inner street should begin and end. On screen, that discussion would have stayed far more abstract.

Light models serve another purpose. Holding a lamp that imitates the sun’s angle up to a room model at 1:20 or 1:10, you see exactly how a window reveal or a ceiling slot changes the light. We put a small camera inside these models and take photographs; often these photos give a more realistic sense of space than the most advanced render.

This is also why we show our planned projects on our website with model photographs. A render shows an unbuilt building as if it were finished, which can mislead clients and the public. A model is honest: it shows an idea, a scale and an intention, but makes no claim to be a finished building. When we do use visualisations, we always label them clearly as such.

Model-making is also a learning process for young architects. While trying to resolve a junction in card, you start thinking about how that junction would be built in reality. How a corner turns, where an eave ends, how two materials meet — these are questions you meet with your hands on the model. In our studio, every new architect builds a model on their first project.