Have you ever wanted a miniature model of the Flatiron Building, Burnham and Root’s famous Monadnock building, or even a 3D map of Amsterdam? Would you want to have your home transformed into a dollhouse-sized replica? UK-based Chisel & Mouse is reconstructing these architectural icons and custom pieces, and bringing them right to your shelf or mantle.
This article was originally published by Metropolis Magazine as "Kenneth Frampton on the Art & Artifice of Architectural Models."
For decades, students at Columbia University’s Graduate School of Architecture, Planning, & Preservation signed up for Kenneth Frampton’s legendary class, Studies in Tectonic Culture. The course tasked students with creating realistic representations of buildings “as a pedagogical exploration of the history of architectural tectonics”—and the models long spilled into the hallways of the architecture school before being hidden away in the archives.
Now, the Arthur Ross Architecture Gallery has decided to pull some of these models out from obscurity and display them in a whole new light for the show Stagecraft: Models and Photos, which opened February 9th. Produced during the 1990s and early 2000s, the models are of significant 20th-century buildings around the world, from Frank Lloyd Wright’s Samuel Freeman House to Peter Zumthor’s St. Benedict Chapel.
