High-Tech Architectural Models Are Sophisticated Marketing Tools
“Balconies” reads one of the signs in Ron Knoll’s storage area. “Solar Panels,” says another, “Pines--Black Forest” a third.
The signs are just the sort of thing one might expect in a designer’s warehouse, with one difference. They’re glued to the front of small plastic boxes.
Inside the boxes are bunches of balconies and window frames, piles of solar panels and pines. All are no taller than three inches.
These are the components of architectural models, small-scale constructions that render the flat blue lines of an architect’s drawings into office buildings and shopping malls long before any ground is bulldozed or walls are built.
A model maker “has to have the ability to see three-dimensionally. He breaks the drawings down into simple blocks and then builds it up again,” said Knoll, founder of Knoll Architectural Models in Rockville, Md.
As recently as 10 years ago architectural model makers used paper and wood, the traditional materials of ship models. Most models were straightforward interpretations of the blueprints, with painted-on lawns and mirrors glued to the base for lakes.
But as the development of commercial complexes around the country has mushroomed, and the marketing of them has become increasingly competitive, architectural models have grown larger, showier and substantially more expensive.
Some Use Remote Control
They are fast becoming the vehicle through which office tenants are recruited, community zoning and planning bodies persuaded, and the project’s overall ambience expressed.
Some elaborate building models, costing several hundred thousand dollars, have moving parts that can be operated by remote control, much like changing television channels.
Walls are moved to see inside a building, lights are dimmed to reflect a building’s profile at nightfall and roofs are lifted to view an interior floor plan.
As the real estate market began to tighten in the early 1980s, developers began to seek new ways to grab the attention of lenders and tenants. At the same time, movie producers such as Steven Spielberg and George Lucas began to expand the use of models with scenes such as the intergalactic battles in “Star Wars.”
The advent of computer-aided design, however, turned the model-making industry inside out. Computers can be used in photographic chemical milling, a process that uses an acid bath to cut tiny fences, doors, girders and the like out of brass or plastic.
Such materials are much stronger than the traditional materials and allow greater complexity and crispness in model construction, Knoll said.
In addition, computers have given model makers the ability to go beyond mere technical accuracy to a level of factual design.
In the construction of an office complex, for example, the model maker can fashion such detail that a viewer can see window dressings in the storefronts and patterns in the inlay of lobby ceilings.
Complex Model Built
“Models used to be pretty objects, but with computers, they have become interactive displays,” said Trip Anderson, founder of Trip Tech Models Inc. in Waltham, Mass. “Model makers are not merely technicians anymore--they’re artisans. They’re bringing ideas to life.”
Anderson’s firm has just completed a 10-foot-by-12-foot model of Reston, Va.-based Himmel-MKDG’s proposed Reston Town Center that includes more than 70 electrical circuits and 100 separately designed miniature storefronts.
Tiny human figures in realistic poses crowd the model’s streets. A man clutches his hat against the wind on one corner, while a group of office workers eat sandwiches in a park area near another. The miniature marquee on the model’s movie theater advertises “Hairnet” and “Desk Jobs.”
While traditional models were meant to last only long enough to convey the architect’s ideas to the developer, the newer models are meant to have a life of two or three years--long enough for the developer to convey his ideas to prospective lenders and tenants.
The new models also cost a lot more. Traditional models carry a price tag of between $5,000 and $20,000. Elaborate models with interactive lighting and other realistic details start at $250,000. Anderson’s model of the Reston Town Center cost $500,000.
For that, model makers say, a developer gets a creation that will not only show a planning commission how the buildings will sit on the land, but tenants and potential investment partners just what sort of atmosphere they’ll be getting for their money.
“What we do is put together a sense of reality for a project before it exists,” said David Gibson, the Dallas model maker credited with introducing theatrical lighting devices and intricately detailed interiors into the industry repertoire.
Have Become Standard
Gibson made the first of the “super-models” in 1974, when he fashioned an 8-foot-high rendition of the lobby proposed for the Pennzoil Building in Houston by the Gerald D. Hines Interests firm.
