3 minutos
The image is a scaled model of the Cathedral of Santiago which was brought to me by the Three Kings. Image © José Ramón HernándezI’m a lucky guy. Someone with so much luck that at times I can stir up feelings of jealousy in my friends and colleagues.
My two records in this are:
1). I got out of mandatory military service because in the draft I drew ‘excess of contingents.’
And, even more important:
2). During my entire architecture degree I didn’t have to make even one single scaled model.
I don’t have an explanation for either one of these things. I didn’t do anything in particular, I wasn’t searching for a way to get out of them; I didn’t zigzag about things; I didn’t skip out or dodge anything. Very simply put, things just worked out this way. I still don’t know how to explain it even to this day.
I am so bad at constructing scaled models, and it’s so much work for me, that I think, had they obliged me to make one in my projects class, I would have proceeded to do it totally backwards: starting with something like a toaster, for example, and then designing a building with that same form. I mean, come on, I’m convinced that the thing about Gehry and binoculars was for this same exact reason.
So, a good amount of years later, definitively safe and having officially gotten out of everything, something inside of me randomly decided that I would like to make scaled models from time to time. It’d be so fun! (Everything is fun when no one obliges you to do it.)
But, scaled models are a big trap. Watch out. They only deal with one facet of architecture, and not even the most important one: the external appearance. And what’s more, to be able to do this they normally go against the main principles.
They are not scaled models of pieces of architecture, but rather scaled models of solid objects. The reality of a work of architecture – its interior space, the distribution – has nothing to do at all with a scaled model. Scaled models are like dealing with fetishes, and the way of assembling them also doesn’t hold any type of real relation to the actual construction needed in the buildings which the models represent.
They are toys. It’s fun! And there resides the catch – that the forms of the models need to be simplified to be able to elicit them, and that joining together pieces of paper and plastic is what configures these curious simplifications. But let’s not fool ourselves: they are not working or studied scaled models for a deeper understanding. They are purely for fun.
Even though they are for fun, there are still various categories. For example, the models of Lego are a total luxury, an opulent exhibition. Their constructors can make authentic recreations to evoke the water of Fallingwater or the cascades of the Opera of Sydney all with pieces of plastic. (It’s better we not speak of the pillars of Farnsworth ).
The models of Cubic Fun, are much more modest, but they are also contrived so that the pre-casted fine sheets of foam core board can be assembled without the necessity of glue, making very easy that which would otherwise be difficult.
The cut and paste paper models are the most professional. Even though, as the models that they are, they are also after the object’s external appearance and its component as a decorative element, digging deeper in the constructive and spacial aspects, and often reflecting on the architectural reality (naturally taking into account that one thing is constructing the building, while another is mounting its paper imitation).
The three example that I’ve listed above also have the detail – each one in line for its respective public – of speaking about the real building and contributing informative data, photos, and sometimes even blueprints that help to get to know the building better and give some sort of base to a mere pastime.
So I’ll leave it at this for now. I have to go and put together the Lego version of the Guggenheim (the second edition, new and improved) that doesn’t have the spiral slope or anything, but it’s still wicked cool anyway.
