Guest researchers: Wallis Miller, Professor, University of Kentucky, Andres Lepik, Berlin, and Victor Plahte Tschudi, Norwegian Institute in Rome/University of Oslo

The architectural model represents a particular mode of reflection. Oscillating between abstract and concrete, the model is a working tool to conceive, develop and communicate both form and space. The model is an exhibition object in its own right, a tradition as real and possibly influential as built architecture. The history of the architectural model spans from prophesy to documentation. It can invoke the possible, the unachievable, the typical, the utopian, the rejected, the permanent and the past.

The Model Project studies architectural models in various genres and formats, including working and presentation models rendered conventionally and digitally. The project investigates both old and new modes of production and representation as physical entity and conceptual figure. From the miniature to the mock-up, the model continues to be one of architecture’s most influential mass media. As a representational tool, the model is an important part of the multifaceted history of the architectural museum and, more generally, of architectural collections. The research project includes complex model projections of the renaissance and baroque, lost and dismantled eighteenth and nineteenth century scale model collections in chalk, cork, wood and plaster as well as experimental models within and beyond modernism. Models are powerful ideological tools for the aspirations and self-projections of groups and even nations; they can revise the past, censor the present and idealize the future. Models cast built environments as miniatures and, thereby, men as giants. The patron, maker or observer of models has a sense of control that, in the relation to a complex reality, requires a moral standpoint.

The Model Project is a laboratory speculating on historical, imagined, engraved, painted or fictional model projects and model exhibitions. We study the history and historicity of the architectural model, its shifting materiality, modes of display and character of spaces. A part of OCCAS, the project group conducts research, organizes seminars and conferences, teaches as well as curates historical and contemporary exhibitions involving the architectural model.