Modelling Time: The Permanent Collection 1925–2014 chronicles the exhibition Model as Ruin at the House of Artists in Oslo, November 1 – December 15, 2013. Together with master students from the Oslo School of Architecture and Design, Mari Hvattum and Mari Lending brought a unique, modernist model collection out of the archives, re-exhibiting it at the venue that once hosted its biggest ever display in 1931. The collection testifies to a different modernism; not white and austere but colourful, diverse, and full of detail.

Published by Torpedo Press, Oslo 2014, Modelling Time gives an in-depth portrayal of the so-called ‘Permanent Collection’ of Norwegian scale models, photographs and drawings, tracing its international trajectory of exhibitions from Brussels in 1927 to its last appearance at the World’s Fair in New York in 1939. The book documents the collection’s heydays as part of a vivid international modernist culture, as well as its archival diaspora as it falls into oblivion after WWII. In an extensive, archive-based essay editors Lending and Hvattum give the full context of the collection, while Juliane Derry and Jorge Otero-Pailos look into the models’ materiality and issues of decay. Model scholars and architecture curators Barry Bergdoll, Carson Chan, Pippo Ciorra, Oliver Elser, Juliet Koss, Andres Lepik, Adam Lowe, Wallis Miller, Jorge Otero-Pailos, Léa-Catherine Szacka, and Victor Plathe Tschudi presents a variety of perspectives inspired by the Oslo collection.

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