Every Rawform project gets one large physical model, usually 1:50, built early and left on the table until handover. It is not a presentation object. Several of them are ugly.
What a model does that a render cannot
A render answers a question you already asked. A model gets picked up, turned over, and argued with by people who were not invited to the meeting.
On Steenhouwer Atelier the model settled the north wall in about four minutes, after three weeks of drawings had not. Someone lifted the roof off and the daylight argument became obvious.
It changes who speaks
This is the part we did not expect. Clients who will not challenge a drawing will absolutely challenge a model, because a model does not look finished and therefore does not look like a decision already taken.
Contractors do the same. We have had three buildability problems raised at model stage that would have surfaced at tender.
The cost
Roughly six weeks of one person’s time and a few hundred euros of board. Against a project of any size this is a rounding error, and it is the single practice habit we would keep if we had to drop everything else.
Written by
Joris Peeters
Associate, Adaptive Reuse
Joris surveys what is already standing. He has written reuse strategies for four listed industrial structures, three of which are now occupied.
