Dollhouses for adults: how social media turbocharged tiny models

Peter Wake wasn’t a Lego kid. But he fell in love with model making after graduating as an architect.

After completing a postgraduate course 21 years ago, Wake was told by a tutor that computer-generated imagery (CGI) would mean he’d never work. “He was wrong, very wrong,” said Wake, who has been employed in top architecture practices as a model maker ever since. “It’s a craft that is never going to die. It adapts.”

Peter Wake with a model he made for Central Station development and concourse. Credit: Janie Barrett

Social media has turbocharged the public’s appetite for miniatures of built and unbuilt projects.

The shortlist for Australia’s 2024 Unbuilt award will be announced later this month. These awards represent architects’ wildest dreams before politics, zoning and costs spoil the vision.

Completed or not, architectural models are like dollhouses for adults. And their execution by highly-sought professional model makers like Wake can determine the success of a project.

Despite the growing use of CGI renders, most big architecture firms still use scale models, from cardboard and wood as well.

“They don’t lie,” Sydney architect Shaun Carter of Carter Williamson said of the models. “Clients love models. They can see their home; their building, come to life and leap off the page.”

Scale models have been used for thousands of years. They were placed in the tombs of important individuals in Ancient Egypt to provide the luxury of home in the afterlife.

Australia’s oldest model is of Macquarie Lighthouse designed by colonial architect James Barnet. It is one of the Powerhouse’s current exhibition of 1001 most remarkable things, along with a model of a spiral staircase, 1888.

In Alexandria, Smart Design Studio’s office is built around large display cases of models. Its principal William Smart describes them as a “cemetery of tombs to past projects and ideas”.

Woods Bagot’s Wake often starts by modelling the full-building envelope to show what is possible.

Then they get creative, said Woods Bagot’s global design leader and principal, Domenic Alvaro. The architects work with Wake to refine the designs, and what they can achieve within constraints, such as requirements that each resident have a view of the sky.

“It’s not just about the finesse of the facade and getting to the end result. It’s about the entire process. They’re very much about engaging clients and the authorities,” said Alvaro.

A complete model helps convince a jury in an architectural competition, says Alvaro. “There’s a confidence you get with a resolved model. It says to juries you have really worked through something. There is no smoke and mirrors.”

Wake finds 3D printable models fast and useful. What can take him days to make takes just 17 hours to print, and it can be printed by team members around the world.

Some old practices are still being used.

Italian architect Filippo Brunelleschi made a model of the brick dome of the Florence cathedral, completed in 1436, to guide craftsmen.

Nearly 600 years later, Smart did something similar, creating a scale model of a complex project that he left in a construction site office to show the builders what the finished building would look like. “They used it so much, to say, ‘Ah, that’s where that comes down’,” Smart said.

A model of Harry Seidler’s Gilhotra House, Hunters Hill, photographed in 1995 with black background in sun to capture shadows. Credit: Harry Seidler. Copyright Penelope Seidler.

Nearly every time Smart shows a client a model, they’re shocked. “They’re like, ‘Oh, I didn’t realise that was there’, or ‘I didn’t know it was that tall’. It’s very, very useful, and we do it to understand the scale and proportion.”

They also use models to identify what they don’t know. “Sometimes a model can [reveal] a bit of a surprise. A detail I haven’t thought of, such as the quality of light.”

Showing how future homes would look in light and shade was important to the late architect Harry Seidler.

His daughter Polly Seidler said much of her youth was spent helping her father take photos of architectural models outside.

She would carry a table tennis table outside, it would be draped in black cloth, and folded so half became a backdrop. “Dad would take photos in the sunshine at the right time of day to show the shadows,” she said.

Polly’s mother Penelope Seidler, an architect and director of Harry Seidler & Associates, said she made a model of their home in Killara in 1964.

“Models seem so out of fashion now,” said Penelope Seidler. “CGIs have taken over but a well-made model truthfully portraying the building in its environment has an impact that a drawing cannot achieve.”

When Seidler was trying to get a client to agree to the purchase of Frank Stella’s ‘Cones and Pillars’ series of artworks for the lobby of Grosvenor Place at 225 George St, he used a model with tiny replicas of the artworks. The client agreed, said Polly.

“Who made the mini versions of my sculptures?” Stella asked.

Elizabeth Torres from Smart Design Studio working on a model. Credit: Romello Pereira

For Wake, success is including compelling details in large-scale models.

A large-scale model he made of the proposed apartment block for Coronation Property in Chatswood shows the nearby police station’s tree. It provides shade over the location where journalists are usually briefed.