Body Challenges – Between Architectural Scale Models and Architectural Objects

Abstract

“The domain of inhabitable objects that architecture claims as its own finds its first intimation in the model. The model purports to present architecture, not represent it.” Scale models have long been recognized as a powerful device for envisioning architecture, having – as architectural objects do – a three-dimensional existence and involving – as said objects also do – a construction process. That is why scale models are still trusted as architecture closest representation, even if the relationship between one and the other must be acknowledged as a strictly arbitrary one, since all relationships of representation are arbitrary. But some scale models seem to aim to question their representational condition. By virtue of their size and also of the materials they are built with, some scale models compel one to enter into them rather than just encounter them, allowing for a comprehensive experience that emulates the experience desirably made possible by the architectural object they represent. The body is challenged to live inside those scale models, to immerse in their interior, even to move through it, with such scale models becoming habitable objects. And even if these scale models do not always find regular use, the history of architecture documents their adoption as a pervasive practice. One question must thus be poised: are such objects still representations, or have they crossed a line and become architectural objects? This paper sets out to discuss the role of the body in the distinction between an architectural object and certain scale models, thus contributing to the inderstanding of both. Rather than on a set of intrinsic features pertaining to each one of those objects, the distinction between one and the other will be sought on how those objects are signified. Those objects become either an architectural object or a scale model depending on how the body challenges itself to get embraced by them.

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