Gestured Space as a First Introduction to Model Making
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.51596/sijocp.v2i2.60Keywords:
model, space, place, gesture, educationAbstract
When talking about modelling in architectural education, the question of whether we should focus on digital or analogue models easily pops up. But both have advantages and disadvantages. Virtual models are efficient and easily adaptable. Physical models incorporate tactility and better express the designer’s chosen position. More important is to use the right model at the right moment in the design process.
However, they both have the disadvantage of focusing on the objects, the volumes and planes, and not on the voids defined by these objects. After all, architecture is all about designing spaces and places. We design objects, walls, floors and ceilings, but only to create these places with specific characteristics. Experienced designers know this workaround. But if beginning architecture students start making models as we know them, they might get a wrong understanding of what the focus in architecture should be about.
This can be partly countered by showing them how to make negative models—for example, carving out space out of a block in clay. An even faster way of modelling space is by using hands to define voids. A vertically positioned hand can evoke a wall. A horizontal hand can call up a floor. Young designers can easily focus on the design of the voids because their hands are already there; they shouldn’t be designed anymore. Larger surfaces can be created by more hands by more collaborating designers. `More curved or broken surfaces can be easily made by manipulating the hands, for example, by bending the hand or just a few fingers.
In architectural education in our school, we have let students use their hands to create scaled spaces before making other models as we know them.
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Copyright (c) 2022 Karel Vandenhende
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