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

Thursday Posting: Architectural Models

Miniature

“Scale Models are a basic mechanism used to understand, explore and conceptualize architecture.”

            -Albert C. Smith

Smith, Albert.  Architectural Model as Machine. http://books.google.com/books?id=2-9uqRbXk9IC&pg=PA112&lpg=PA112&dq=perfection,+architectural+model&source=bl&ots=JKsvgk5bIn&sig=peKEvoUT03e15NUia00MQHbctlM&hl=en&ei=zwDUScSzONLVlQeL5JnVDA&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=5#PPP6,M1

 

In his book Smith discusses the importance of architectural models and miniatures in general as an important part of the design process.  Smith’s book breaks down the architectural model into 5 parts: Define/Divine/Design, The changing mechanism of the scale model, Scale model as machine, Machine as scale model machine, Pandora and the modern scale model machine.  In his chapter about the model machine, Smith states: The model machine extends humanity’s modest ability to measure the perceived chaos of the unknown.  However, as Louis Kahn’s example reveals, without the perceived proportions offered by a trusted analogy to mediate, humans may find only a frightening loss of control over their understanding of the world.”

Reading excerpts from Smith’s book was very informative, as I have recently begin to look at my work as being miniature models of communities.  Smith’s essays on the functionality of models in the architectural design process gave me helpful information that will help me in developing a stronger thesis for my series. 

Monday Entry: Martin Wolf Wagner

Wagner is a German based artist who has been working as a freelance photographer since 2000.  He is well known for his landscape photography that combines light and color to create mysterious imagery. The Morning News in discussing Wagner’s nightscapes states: “With an eye for the solitude that comes with open landscapes, German photographer Martin Wolf Wagner shares a gallery of luminescent, moving images where nighttime doesn’t necessarily mean darkness.” Crown Dozen reviews his photos as “huge in scope, soothing in their quietness, and very, very solitary.”  In 2007 Wagner was named by Getty Images as one to watch.  Wagner currently resides in the countryside between Stuttgart and the Black Forest.  Not a lot of information was available as to the schooling of Wagner, but I was immediately drawn to his minimalist compositions and use of color.  I really enjoy how he as taken the nightscape and used color in such a way that has given the category new life and a less stereotypical meaning.

Gallery representing artist:

http://www.london-photographic-awards.com/site/lightbox2.php?type_f=3&user_id=6793&fid=0,8,250

Artist website:

http://martinwolfwagner.com/index.php?lng_ID=1&c=1,0,0,0,0&gcat=1

No artist interview available.

Thursday Posting: Defense Architecture: Bunkers

Fortifications

“Approximately 1,500 bunkers were built during World War II along the French shores to forestall an Allied landing—“the Atlantic Wall.” Decommissioned after the Allied invasion of Normandy, this elaborate defense system now lies abandoned.”

-Rosecrans Baldwin

Virilio, Paul.  Bunker Archeology.  “The Frightening Beauty of Bunkers.”  Princeton Architectural Press, 1975.

In this article Virilio discusses his youth and how you grew to find bunkers appealing, and even comforting.Virilio states:“I see it clearly now as a case of intuition and also as a convergence between the reality of the structure and the fact of its implantation alongside the ocean: a convergence between my awareness of spatial phenomena.”  After Virilio’s first encounter with a bunker, he began to hunt for them, driven by a purely archeological purposes.  Upon viewing different bunkers, he found himself asking the questions: “why would these extraordinary constructions, compared to the seaside villas, not be perceived or even recognized? Why this analogy between the funeral archetype and military architecture? Why this insane situation looking out over the ocean?”  Virilio points out that in previous eras, fortifications and bunkers were oriented towards a specific passageway, valley or port.  The bunkers from the WWII era are placed “at the summit of dunes, cliffs, and across beaches.”  The essay then goes on to describe the delight and intrigue Virilio had in finding bunkers.  He states: “My activities often led me into teeming ports, and what most surprised and intrigued me there was finding once again in the middle of courtyards and gardens my concrete shelters; their blind, low mass and rounded profile were out of tune with the urban environment. These objects had been left behind, and were colorless; their gray cement relief was silent witness to a warlike climate.”

This article interested me in its topic of abandonment, which is a major theme in my current series.  While Virilio only discusses the abandonment of bunkers, he does a good job analyzing them against their surroundings, and brings up important points about their placement and original use.  

Monday Entry: Alan Kupchick

I couldn’t find a lot of information on Alan Kupchick, but I was immediately drawn to his colorful, crisp images of sparse buildings set beneath bright blue skies.  In THE Magazine they state that on Kupchick’s road trips across America, he “has taken a fresh look at our urban and natural landscapes.  Filtered through his unique insight and wry humor, these images are presented in bold chromatic statements.  In a statement from Kupchick, he explains his work by saying: “I create photographs that make the world look like a well organized, good-looking, well structured place, which of course it isn’t.  But it makes me feel better to portray it that way.” His use of clean lines and shapes makes urban environments look pristine and organized, and almost believable. 

Gallery representing artist:

http://www.photoeye.com/gallery/forms2/index.cfm?image=4&id=187266&imagePosition=1&Door=2&Portfolio=Portfolio1&Gallery=2

Thursday Posting: Fall out shelters

Paranoia/preparedness

“Trust Me!  You can survive a nuclear or dirty bomb attack.  It will not be the end of the world.  But, you must be prepared!”

            -undergroundbombshelter,com

Civil Defense: The Family Fallout Shelter.  Nebraskastudies.org. 

http://www.nebraskastudies.org/0900/frameset_reset.html?http://www.nebraskastudies.or g/0900/stories/0901_0132.html

This article explores the logistics of family fallout shelters, and the various ways one can go about building one.  It also explains the history of bomb shelters, and the reasoning and events that for many made a fall out shelter a necessity.  Fall out shelters were very popular in the 50s and 60s during the height of the cold war.  According to the article, “A fallout shelter built in the corner of a basement was the least expensive type, and it supposedly offered "substantial protection." In many plans, concrete blocks provided the walls. An open doorway and vents near the floor provided ventilation. The shelter's entrance was constructed with a sharp turn to reduce radiation intensity.”  This was one plan for fall out shelter.  Other plans consisted of constructing a separate fall out shelter several feet underground.  Just by placing the shelter four or five feet underground significantly reduces the level of gamma radiation that would reach the family.  According to the article, “one plan suggested that the roof of the shelter can be used as an attractive patio.”  The article also explains the protocol for what to do if such a nuclear disaster were to strike.  Families were recommended to stay in their fall out shelters for at least two weeks after the nuclear blast.

Reading this article was interesting to understand the psychology and mindset that occupied people living through the cold war.  Certainly there are people today that still have bomb shelters, as the threat of nuclear war is ever present.  I was especially intrigued by the camouflaging of the shelters as a patio or another kind of functional object, and I think this could bring an interesting aspect to my work.