Thursday Posting: Building Architectural Models

Scale

"True architectural model making is mainly confined to 3 areas. Planning models, test and development models, sales models and occasionally exhibition models."

-Model Makers Resource

"Architectural Model Making." Model Makers Resource.

http://themodelmakersresource.co.uk/articles/article020.html

While the article talks about the three different forms of model making, the fully finished model is the one I'm interested in.  This model shows color and building details, along with "landscaping, window finishes, parking spaces, underground car parks, street lights, and all the street furniture we come to expect in our busy environments."  According to the article, this model is usually used not so much for planning but for scale development, and as exhibition center pieces.  This type of model is built out of a variety of materials, and the bases are typically wooden, while the actual buildings are laser cut from styrene.  Details such as balconies and landscapes can also be built from varying materials.  The article states: "Plants, trees, bushes and grass effects are created from many different materials depending on the scale and type of vegetation. Most items tend to be off the shelf, pre-made trees bushes and flowers."

Reading this article was interesting to look at scale-models from the maker's perspective.  The reason I have been doing this research is to more fully understand scale models, since some of my images are beginning to look like miniature versions of buildings.  Understanding the process that goes into making these models helps me in viewing my own images in these terms. So far, I have come to conclude that every little detail must be planned, and nothing left to chance.  This seems to reflect the attitude I take when creating my work.  

Monday Entry: Popel Coumou

Coumou is a photographer from the Netherlands who specializes in miniature interior environments.  According to New Photographers 2007, Coumou “constructs and captures two-dimensional interior environments in miniature.” Light, color, and space all play important roles in her work.  I really identify with her work because of the clean lines she maintains and her careful and controlled use of color.  However, her work is also quite different than mine in the way she uses light, which tends to add dimension and texture in her imagery. Coumou has had numerous exhibitions won many awards, so far all of which are European.  She attended the Gerrit Rietveld Academy in Amsterdam in 2004 for photography.  Not a lot of information was available on her, mostly articles in Dutch.  On the website Platform 21 they discuss Coumou’s process of creating images: “In the spaces Popel photographs, people are almost always absent. Her images are thus not narrative ones: only the division of the room, colour and the play of light create the hushed atmosphere.  She later builds 3D models of the rooms, using stark effects of light and shadow, and photographes them again. Sometimes she builds imagined or ‘virtualised’ miniature rooms of clay, paper and textile. She then photographs these as if the buildings can actually be entered.”

Artist website:

 http://www.popelcoumou.nl/work.php