Modelling Messages

The model is one of the oldest means of architectural representation and comes in an extravagant variety of forms, from miniaturizations of reality mesmerizing in their exactness to wildly energetic sculptural representations. Modeling Messages: The Architect and the Model is a study of the contemporary model, American and international, and its myriad uses in architectural practice. Among the illustrations are inventive designs by architects Peter Eisenman, Frank Gehry, Zaha Hadid, and Rem Koolhaas. Author Karen Moon discusses the meaning of the model for the architect, the relationship between model and building, and the impact of scale. She also explores how architects use models for presentation and the creation of a public image. In addition, she focuses on the practice of model making: the relationship between the architect and the maker; the materials and new technologies that are transforming model making.

Karen Moon is a historian of design and architecture. She has written on the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, including studies of the Scottish architect George Walton and the Anglican Cathedral of Kampala, Uganda, by Arthur Beresford Pite. Moon has worked as a modelmaker for BBC Television and as an exhibition curator. She currently lives in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, where she works as a consultant for architectural and cultural heritage, most recently at the World Heritage Site of Kilwa Kisiwani, an East African port of the eleventh to eighteenth century.