Looking here at the models and the complexities of their making for the On The Surface exhibition, I discovered much about tools, materials, techniques and intentions. Tools have been developed to shape material; they are capable of more applications; they can perform more efficiently; they have limitations. The limitations of CNCR is dependent on the materials used. Materials most commonly used with CNCR are compliant – metal, foam, man-made boards are much less resistant to the pressures of making. They too have their limitations and often privilege sight over tactility. Nor are the limits always physical, sometimes they are no more informative or persuasive than a virtual model. Less homogenous materials with similar physical limitations can be more informative and more persuasive because they are not neutral, because they offer resistance through grain, knots, spalting and colour variation to the attitude of the maker. Such materials come with associations, that are haptic and tactile, not just visual. Techniques have been developed for working with wood using tools, while work flows have been developed for using plastic materials with CNCR. What techniques have been developed for working with wood using CNCR? Techniques discovered in the making of the On The Surface models embody four things: 1 knowledge of how materials come together, a testing of construction 2 simplification of an idea in order to embody the essence of the project 3 creatively using one material to represent another 4 a cycle of testing, not a linear production; a process of testing, an attitude of testing Why make a physical model? To re-state something I said at the beginning of this essay, a persuasive model is the sum result of a design process. It communicates a method of making and the results of speculative exploration. It has a material presence that tells of its construction and condition, without arresting its meaning or significance, that remains open to interpretation. Its fragmentary nature, its island condition presents a form that is recognisable, able to be imaginatively transformed and abstractly occupied. In model- making there is deliberate allowance for the unexpected in response to material resistance. There must be an openness to redesign that allows the material to inform process. Judgement in making is not easily programmed or calculated, it is not a linear process. Fundamental is an understanding of the translation that is required when moving between a digital model and a physical model. Every model communicates information, but the nature of how and what is conveyed is complex. A model is a material essay that discovers new knowledge or understanding and
then tells these discoveries in a meaningful way. In his introduction to Writing on the Image , Mark Dorrian describes essay writing ‘as a dynamic and vital process, an ongoing interaction of thought with its materials that develops in ways that are frequently unexpected. It is not as if what was prepared or conceptualised beforehand is simply set aside, but rather that it becomes reorientated and reconfigured…’. This dynamic and non-determined approach was constructive in framing the relationship of architectural models to digital fabrication technology. I had two prepared questions: have the advances and increasing availability of digital technology changed or even superseded the specialised role of architectural model maker? and, is the appeal of digital fabrication that it promises to make the production of models easier, and if so, how does this impact what is made and what it communicates? A third question emerged that reconfigured the focus of the research: why is an architectural model so compelling? The answer is found in the significance of gestures of making, the importance of visual analogy and a questioning of what matters in the creation of a physical architectural model. I am a maker of models. Trained as an architect, I developed both digital and non-digital skills in both making architectural models and understanding their significance. I currently manage a suite of digital fabrication equipment that includes laser cutters, 3D printers, 3D scanners and a CNC router. My role involves the application of digital fabrication technologies for the design, development and production of technical, artistic and architectural models. Key to the creative production of such models is an understanding of non-digital techniques of making, an appreciation of the materials that are involved and a sensitivity to the situations of their use and display. There are challenges with digital fabrication and, when used unreflectively, can be counterproductive. Often models made with digital fabrication are only superficially interesting and lack creative appeal. A common misconception is that taking a digital design and using digital fabrication to produce a model will be easy and will always result in what one expects. However, it is possible to take a reflective approach to making and a considered understanding of the complex relationship between intention, material and technique. With such an approach, digital fabrication can be applied in more productive and creative ways. This was tested by the models made for On The Surface , which were sited in a complex and carefully integrated constellation of different modes of architectural representation. It was the interrogative use of digital fabrication that revealed the possibilities and limitations of these technologies. n
The writing of Mark Dorrian in Urban Cartographies, Writing on the Image , and The Exhibition as an ‘Urban Thing’ along with discussions that took place during the design and exhibition of On The Surfac e by the art, architecture and urbanism atelier, Metis, guided the questioning of the role played by an architectural model and the importance of making. Reflection on this specific case of model making was influenced by a broader examination of the nature of representation in art and architecture that included close reading of Robin Evans’s Translation from Drawing to Building , Alberto Pérez-Gómez and Louise Pelletier’s Architectural Representation and the Perspective Hinge and Walter Benjamin’s The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction . For insight into what makes a model compelling and attractive, Susan Stewart’s On Longing and several books by Barbara Maria Stafford proved invaluable in understanding how an artefact can be encountered and why it may generate meaning. In addition to the physical nature of a model, what gives it presence and significance derives from the process of how it was made. Vilém Flusser’s The Gesture of Making opened up an avenue of thought on the inseparable human aspects of making and Bruno Latour’s ‘Why Has Critique Run Out of Steam?’ From Matters of Fact to Matters of Concern guided the discourse in an attempt to understand the defining quality of objects and things. How to situate my personal and specific descriptions of using digital fabrication technologies to make models in a context that moved beyond the personal, but retained the importance of material and technique, was supported by the exacting technical descriptions of making by Gilbert Simondon. Mark Dorrian and Adrian Hawker, Metis: Urban Cartogra- phies (London: Black Dog Publishing, 2002). Mark Dorrian and Adrian Hawker, “The Exhibition as an Urban Thing,” Intersticies: Journal of Architecture and Related Art s, 2015: pp 7-16. ‘On the Surface’, a retrospective exhibition of the work of Metis was first exhibited in the gallery of the Arkitektskolen Aarhus, Denmark between 10th October and 14th November 2014; it was also exhibited at the Sculpture Court of the Edinburgh College of Art from the 27th March to 6th April 2015. Robin Evans, Translation from Drawing to Building and Other Essays (London: Architectural Association, 1997). Alberto Pérez-Gómez and Louise Pelletier, Architectural Representation and the Perspective Hinge (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1997). Walter Benjamin, The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction , First published 1936, trans. J. A. Under- wood (London: Penguin Books, 2008). Susan Stewart, On Longing: Narratives of the Miniature, the Gigantic, the Souvenir, the Collection (Durham, NC.: Duke University Press, 1993). Barbara Maria Stafford, Body Criticism: Imaging the Unseen in Enlightenment Art and Medicine (Cambridge, Mass: The MIT Press, 1991). —— Artful Science: Enlightenment Entertainment and the Eclipse of Visual Education , Second printing 1999 (Cam- bridge, Mass.: The MIT Press, 1994). —— Visual Analogy: Consciousness as the Art of Connecting (Cambridge, Mass.: The MIT Press, 1999). —— Echo Objects: The Cognitive Work of Images (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 2007). Vilém Flusser, ‘The Gesture of Making,’ in Gestures , (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2014) pp. 32-47. Bruno Latour, “Why Has Critique Run Out of Steam? From Matters of Fact to Matters of Concern,” Critical Inquiry , 2004: 225-248. Gilbert Simondon, Being and Technology (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2012).
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