Architecture School’s Myth of Model-

Making
When COVID first hit, my classmates had already finished the site model. Spanning across two
tables, the large wooden structure was a painstaking effort, with a void in the middle waiting to
be filled by massing models from each student. This site model was never used. It went straight
to recycle. As the semester switches abruptly to online teaching, it fades from the fringe of our
consciousness while we grapple with the drastic changes brought by a global pandemic. Yet as
design-studio classes remain online in the following semesters, the model stays in our memory
as the last model we’ve made in school. Why then, should we make physical models in the first
place, and is model-making indispensable in architecture education?

History may provide some insight. Mark Morris’s book “Models: Architecture and the
Miniature” describes the current model-making practice in American architecture schools as an
inheritance of Bauhaus.1 To Morris, Bauhaus departs from the Beaux-Art tradition as it affirms
the role of manual work in education and strives to eliminate the “arrogant barrier between
craftsman and artists.”2 Model-making in this context is charged with ideological agenda. But
tradition alone can only descriptively explain but not prescriptively justify. Today, an architecture
student’s mode of representation hardly bears any significance on their social status, nor would
making models with blue foam in air-conditioned fabrication labs form any meaningful
camaraderie between a student and a construction worker. What keeps models in architecture
schools now?

Several writers propose an alternative theory implicitly based on Bergsonian

metaphysics, claiming the superiority of models comes from their “realness.”3 Mostly rivaling
models against drawings, these writers argue that models create a lively, immersive experience
for the viewers by co-existing in space and time.4 Model feels more real than drawings: it
possesses the Benjaminian aura, a sense of realness even Virtual Reality could not substitute.
The emphasis on “realness” only shows a confounded understanding that mistakes a model for
the piece of architecture that it represents. Models are means of representation, yet they are
subconsciously taken as the end goal of design. As student projects are rarely realized, models
are the only materialization of the abstract design ideas--they are our oeuvre incarnated. The

1
Mark Morris, Models: architecture and the miniature (Chichester: Wiley-Academy, 2006), 19-23.
2
Morris, Models, 19-23; Ulrich Conrads, 1919 Walter Gropius: “Programme of the Staatliches Bauhaus in
Weimar”, in Programs and Manifestoes on 20th-Century Architecture, trans. M. Bullock (1971), 49. quoted
in Kenneth Frampton, “The Bauhaus: The Evolution of an Idea 1919-32” in Modern Architecture, (London:
Thames & Hudson Ltd, 2020), 132.
3
Morris, Models, 13; Emily Abruzzo, foreword to Model Making by Megan Werner (New York: Princeton
Architectural Press, 2011), 9-11; Megan Werner, Model Making (New York: Princeton Architectural Press,
2011), 12-13; Rolfe Janke, Architectural Models, trans. Godela v. Xylander (London: Academy Editions,
1978), 8-10.
4
Morris, Models, 13; Abruzzo, Model Making, 9-11; Werner, Model Making, 12-13; Janke, Architectural
Models, 8-10.
word “model” thus transcends its literal meaning, as the signifier usurps the signified. In other
words, we don’t design architecture in school; we design models. Such voluntary substitution,
relegating the end goal of design to the completion of tangible simulacra, is the very reason that
physical model-making remains indispensable in architecture education today. It is then
unsurprising that architecture students post photos on Instagram proudly holding their models,
not unlike architects cutting ribbons for their newly finished buildings. We caress our models
similar to saintly figures in ecclesiastical art holding a miniature church, piously dedicating it to
Christ, but unlike the Christian figures whose faith lies in what the model represents, our faith
lies in the model itself.

What comes with the “realness” of models is a strong sense of achievement from
making it. The euphoric moment of completing a model is difficult to achieve if we willingly
accept that our creation is merely referential, a proposal to a structure that never exists and
likely never will. Professional practices where physical models are outsourced to specialized
departments dilute this joy. 3D-printed or digital models simply cannot replace the mental
gratification when skilled craftsmanship manually orchestrates materials into a seamless
perfection. Two phenomena illustrate this mindset. The first is the frequent appearance of a
hand holding a piece of the facade or a roof from the rest in photography. The intention might be
to reveal the interior of the model, but it doesn’t justify the brutal invasion of the gigantic hand
into the miniature world. It might be more convincing to suggest that such photographs were
staged scenes to reenact the dramatic moment when the model was just about to be finished,
with the last piece eagerly flying to the sweet embrace of a consummating reunion--the most
satisfying moment of all. The second is the nostalgic trend among architecture students during
the pandemic to produce photorealistic renderings of physical models. Denied access to
dedicated fabrication space makes modeling by hand impossible, but instead of exploring new
modes of representation, more are eager to relive the thrill of model-making in an alternative
reality of computer graphics–to resurrect the dead through necrophilia.

However, making models does not necessarily help produce better design. Often it’s the
opposite: in architecture schools, the most gratifying models are the final models, a
“posthumous stocktaking”5.. It is particularly the embellished details that make the model-maker
proud. Study models that serve to inform design decisions are often made quickly and
unadorned, and are often far less gratifying to make. This observation has been made as early
as in the Renaissance by Alberti:

“I must not omit to observe, that the making of curious, polish’d Models, with the
Delicacy of Painting, is not required from an Architect that only designs to shew the
Things itself; but is rather the Part of a vain Architect, that makes it his Business by
charming the Eye and striking the Fancy of the Beholder, to divert him from a rigorous
Examination of the Parts which he ought to make, and to draw him into an Admiration of
himself. For this Reason I would not have the Models too exactly finish’d, nor too
delicate and neat, but plain and simple.”6
5
Janke, Architectural Models, 18.
6
Leone Battista Alberti, The architecture of Leon Batista Alberti. In ten books. Of painting. In three books.
And of statuary. In one book. Translated into Italian By Cosimo Bartoli. And into English By James Leoni,
Making models with ulterior motives instead of raising design quality costs more than
disapproval from a man 600 years from our time. The requirement of hand-made models in
architecture studios keeps it from being more ethical, inclusive, and sustainable. Demanding
students for a physical model essentially presupposes who the architecture students are--those
with idealized bodies ready to perform such tasks--effectively excluding students with certain
disabilities from architecture schools. In “Why are there so few disabled architects and
architecture students?” David Gissen notes that American architecture students and
professionals with disabilities are “statistically invisible.”7 The requirement to make physical
models, sometimes challenging even for the non-disabled, are among the many structural
issues making architecture a discipline less inclusive than it should be. But this is not simply a
question of empathy or equity. Communities with disabilities have invaluable lessons for
architecture. For example, sight challenged communities perceive space fundamentally
differently from people with eyesight.8 Such new perspectives could offer the architecture world
a new departure to design. Portuguese architect Carlos Pereira, who became blind in his
career, focuses his work on multi-sensoriality. When presenting the design for a swimming pool,
Pereira plays the sound of the sea and invites the audience to touch the water.9 Similarly, if
students with disabilities can articulate their design in unique methods, architecture schools
should welcome them with open arms. Music did not turn down a deafened Beethoven. A more
inclusive curriculum must be in place for architecture schools to follow suit.

For those physically able to make models, such tasks as a requirement limit their scope
and mode of designing. With the expectation of a final model, projects must be first modelable,
to begin with--they must be representable by attainable materials within a reasonable budget
and by an accessible fabrication process. Most models prioritize a view only accessible in reality
through Google Earth or through drones and helicopters. Additionally, as plywood, chipboard,
and styrofoam are available in abundance in art stores, students may subconsciously assume
that the building materials that they represent are likewise plentiful on earth. While this causal
relation begs further confirmation, making physical models with readily available materials
certainly does not help nurture mindfulness in designing with recycled materials, an exploration
long commenced in architectural practices. “Too frequently students do not optimize their files
for the laser cutter beds, which results in extra waste generation”, notes a study on model-
making at the University of Texas at Austin School of Architecture in 2015.10 When this research
group then decided to create a visual installation of the waste generated by models at the end of

Architect. Illustrated with seventy-five copper-plates, engraved by Mr. Picart. In one volume., trans.
Cosimo Bartoli and James Leoni (London: printed by Edward Owen, in Hand-Court, Holborn; for Robert
Alfray, in the Hay-Market, St. James's, 1755), 22.
7
David Gissen, “Why are there so few disabled architects and architecture students?” The Architect’s
Newspaper, June 15, 2018,
https://www.archpaper.com/2018/06/disability-education-of-architects/.
8
Ann Heylighen, “Enacting the Socio-Material: Matter and Meaning Reconfigured through Disability
Experience,” in Revisiting social factors: advancing research into people and place, ed. Georgia Lindsay
and Lusi Morhayim (Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2015), 79-86.
9
Peter-Willem and Ann Heylighen “Blindness and multi-sensoriality in architecture. The case Carlos
Mourão Pereira,” in The place of research, the research of place, ed. Richard L. Hayes, and Virginia
Ebbert, 393-400, quoted in Heylighen, “Socio-Material”, 81-83.
10
Warner Cook, “Model-Making and Waste Management in the UT School of Architecture” (Sustainability
on the UT Campus: A Symposium, 2015), 70.
the semester, they realized the waste would have completely filled their intended exhibition
space!11 Waste as such is particularly ironic as models are eventually flattened through
photography and remain two-dimensional in students’ portfolios while such images could well be
generated through rendering engines.

What would architecture schools look like if not filled by a plethora of models? What
would architecture education be when model-making is no longer an indispensable requirement
but an optional tool only when it provides valuable design insights? These are questions beyond
the ambition of this article. But models are only one of the many myths in architectural education
that beg scrutiny in an ever-changing world where climate change, social injustice, and looming
warfare threaten our daily existence. What is imaginable is that such education would rally
around imagination--met l’imagination au pouvoir--an activity for too long we have relied on
physical models.

11
Ibid.