Model practice: maquettes by Roz Barr Architects

Architects Journal 22 JANUARY, 2016

New National Augustinian Centre and Priory, 2015

This 1:10 model was …...preceded by 1:100 and 1:50 models and facade studies. Scale is always an important decision, and for this we wanted to experience the wall-to-window relationship along with the depth of the facade. This section is through the new priory and the chapel at roof level. It also is a study of our proposal’s most important junction, where the new steel tower connects to the 1960s building. The facade changed as we built the model and it now informs the next stage of the detailed design. (Tulip, black MDF · L 600mm D800mm H 1,800mm)

Kirkton Steadings, Argyll, 2015

This model is a study about mending a ruin. The birch ply conveys the underpinning methodology below the existing 18th-century stone wall. This is a working model, which we can change and remake as we test options for staircases, the positioning of a mezzanine, the form of the roof structure and so on. It is one of many models made for this project for a tower house in the Scottish landscape, and this is a study of how we ‘adapt’ the existing stone steading. This model embodies why we make. (Birch plywood pine, cardboard · L 320mm D200mm H 300mm)

New Valer Church, Norway, 2012

This model was part of our competition entry in 2011. ….the model was built on a meeting table over a long weekend. The formwork was CNCd in blue foam, and is almost the most important element of the model. . (Jelutong, plywood, brass · L 320mm D320mm H 575mm).

The models made in our studio are not simply additional tools or objects made at the end of a design stage to showcase a building or interior. Rather, they are maquettes that may be numerous iterations of an idea, or the beginning of some other idea…….The majority are never seen, as they are part of a conversation in a moment of a process that may have come from a sketch, or the testing of a first thought. The act of making is a process of engaging with an idea that requires a decision that can be ‘made’, rethought, and ‘un-made’. This form of adaptation is about the discourse of architectural thinking, and is a critical part of our process in making and realising an idea. We imagine, we make, and the process is adapted through discussions and decisions about materiality and form. Nothing is fixed in this process. Our ideas are always evolving as we transform them into the physical.