Wax, melted polystyrene, soap bubbles, plaster, bread, sand: there’s no limit to the materials used for making architectural models. They fulfil a function that corresponds to the reason for building the model. There are examples of architecture that would never have been created without models made of soap suds and wire. At the same time, models are more than just a means to an end. They have lives of their own, become fetishes for many designers.
Oliver Elser is a curator at the German Museum of Architecture in Frankfurt, which owns one of the leading architectural model collections in the world, and editor of the catalogue “Das Architekturmodell – Werkzeug, Fetisch, kleine Utopie” (The Architectural Model – Tool, Fetish, Little Utopia, publ. by Scheidegger & Spiess, 2012).