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arch 253
SCALE
Physical Modeling + Spatial Abstraction





    [ 2025 ]

    Course Level:
    Undergraduate Design Foundations
    7-1/2 week accelerator module


    Role:
    Primary Instructor


    • Course Objectives:

    + intro to physical modeling
    + understanding of dimensions and proportion
    + intro to scalar thinking
    + control over formal operators and language
    + multimodal thinking





           

    garnett-design

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    Work displayed above authored by Elliott Natura.







     Scale is a spatial quality separate from that of size and proportion. It indicates a perceived relationship to a reciprocal object/entity, and helps the viewer digest space/form. The understanding of scale and how to interpret/utilize it as a formal device is perhaps one of the most vital tools in the architects’ panoply of spatial devices. A true understanding of scale allows all things to be read as intentional, smoothly translating from the realm of concept to a built reality; a poor understanding renders all work as illegible, confusing, and at best amateurish. Scale is inherently about juxtaposition, comparison, and relativity. This course explores the idea of scale through iterative model-making as the means by which students may demonstrate their own understanding of—and provocation with—scale and scalar thinking.

    Model-making, broadly speaking, is the process of creating an informational mock-up representative of a separate entity or process. Through this definition, we see implicitly shared traits with the concept of scale. Particularly in architecture, models are used as three-dimensional representations of proposed structures, typically at a smaller scale than the original. These ‘scale models’ help translate ideas via the same spatial means + methodologies that our designs seek to eventually embody. Models and model-making offer us avenues of communication that two-dimensional representation cannot.