For hundreds of years the drawing and the model, as the architect’s communicative tools, have remained consistent in their character. Drawings and models have been essential to realize ideas, and especially models have the potential to convert all kinds of information into the physical realm. As we have transitioned from the machine era to the information era, the production of architecture has changed. In the new design processes the computer relieves the paper as medium and the physical model is replaced by a digitally manufactured model. Armed with the capability to draw and make, the machine presents the danger that it will act as designer and maker to produce results that are immediate and merely mirror that which preceded the results. Processes of modification and development are no longer available to us since the gap between information and making is collapsed and produces an irreversible digital design process.

The digital design process leads in a certain sense to a kind of alienation of the architect from the context of the process itself. Furthermore, it involves a danger of a reductive formalism through which the architect may become distanced from his or her work and its consequences The realization of technically-constructed abstract space through the dominance of CAD may represent a powerful tool for reduction and control that cannot relate or react on social, political and economical changes. Digital design might become terrifying, because its mathematical basis is irrefutably fixed. Furthermore it establishes a homogenous space of manufacturing which is in itself rigid and that is not in a position to combine different reference structures:

„…virtual space does not build up a creative framework that includes human beings with their complex behaviour patterns, ethnic differences and various circumstances, not to mention nature and cosmos, but rather mixes up the exponential opportunities of a limited number of binary options with an initiator of social changes.”

The process of design used to be seen as a process of creation or “genesis” executed through cumulating design phases. This iterative process left space for intuitive adaptation and time for the growth of the concept. This stands in extreme contrast to digital design where the cumulative repetition expresses itself through the lightening speed of data processing and where the meaning of time becomes obsolete.

The relationship between design and making requires a certain body of knowledge that resides in the space and time of the working process. ”Making” in general is a process of learning; immediate experience becomes possible. Especially while using physical modelling techniques, unexpected potentials may emerge which need to be systematised. While constructing physical models, the intimate, imaginary and sensuous making in the production process becomes an important means of gaining creative control. Furthermore, physical modelling allows or even demands the investigation of materials and construction; therefore, intricately crafted models enable designers to discover new kinds of innovative structures and systems. Creatively crafted physical models are organisational systems, derived through diagrammatic thinking, capable of condensing processed data, including strategic and tactical information. Such models contain a certain “logic” and are therefore based upon operative mechanisms, systems that are capable of fostering “combinatorial developments.

Like the allusive nature of a non-illustrated recipe book, in which the outcome is somewhat of a surprise, physical modelling is, on one hand, generated through the process of making, where learning experiences will be combined. On the other hand, the “found” qualities in the model need to be systematically further developed. In this process, the realisation of an idea deals with the transmission of the drawing into the physical and tactile realm. This process is subject to negotiation and, while developing the immaterial ideas, a set of opportunities is generated. Through the time-consuming “process of making” physical models, it is possible to develop these further by having a critical understanding of the rich potentials in the process. Models need to be read and yet all aspects need to be transferred into the next step.

The question is: What can we learn from the model? Learning is a creative process where the brain receives information that it has to store. This process demands time. Reading as well as writing stories take time, deepen one´s knowledge and experience and expands one’s memory. Learning is a cultural process. Therefore, learning has to focus on three aspects: observing, judging and inventing. Consequently the “making” is a responsive act, demonstrating how effectively ideas are informed, communicated and read by the maker. In contrast to the use of CAD/CAM techniques, where time is radically compressed, physical modelling creates time and space – a new space of manufacture is generated through interaction. Making architecture has to be considered a conscious endeavour in order for us to imagine and investigate the physical, tacit and time-based aspects of space.

The direct interaction with materiality in designing through making is one route to this position of responsibility in producing space. In practice, it may also contribute to saving an endangered species, the family of physically constructed, architectural models.

notes

1 Soja, Edward: Thirdspace. Basil Blackwell Oxford. In Steele, James: Architektur und Computer. 2001, Verlag, Georg D. Callwey GmbH & Co. München, p.35: „Denn der virtuelle Raum bildet noch keinen schöpferischen Rahmen, der die Menschen mit ihren komplexenVerhaltensmustern, ethnischen Unterschieden und vielfältigen Lebensumständen geschweige denn die Natur und den Kosmos einbezieht, sondern verwechselt die exponentiellen Möglichkeiten einer begrenzten Anzahl binärer Optionen mit einem Initiator gesellschaftlicher
Veränderungen.“

2 Sheill, Bob: Design Through Making. In AD – Architectural Design Vol 75 No 4 July/August 2005, Wiley Academy, England