Page 10 - Are-You-a-Model?

13:00 – 15:00
1 Does size matter?
13:00 Anna-Maria Meister Technical University of Darmstadt
Introduction:
On models and scales
The question of scale is built into the story of architectural models. How large, how detailed, or how long-lived a model is defines not only its appearance, but its role in
the process. By investigating relationships between size, material, temporality of different models we will try to uncover assumptions about models as miniatures or stand-ins, and try to discuss how scale matters.
13:15 Evangelos Kotsioris The Museum of Modern Art
Plasticine vs. glass: Negotiation models for the United Nations head- quarters
Can architectural models construct social relation- ships? This simple question is here interrogated by examining the key role played by physical models in the design and construction of the United Nations Headquarters in New York between 1947 – 52. Erect- ed on international territory, the UN HQ complex was famously publicized as the result of a harmonious collaboration among the members of an international Board of Design comprising ten (male) architects and headed by Wallace K. Harrison. Behind closed doors, however, the entire endeavor quickly unraveled into a tumultuous battle between architectural egos. Over the course of five months, the self-proclaimed
“workshop for peace” run an uphill marathon of 45 meetings, before finally compromising to a commonly tolerated design — a “chimera” of two option models proposed by Oscar Niemeyer and Le Corbusier.
Using the UN HQ as a case study, this paper recasts two types of architectural models as active social agents: first, the countless plasticine scale models used to compare massing options during the design stage; and second, the deployment of a singular-glass and-steel 1:1 mock-up for detailing the curtain wall façade of the Secretariat during construction. On the one hand, the iterative use of abstract mass models — perfected by Harrison during the design of the Rockefeller Center — was strategically deployed as a seemingly “neutral” tool for the negotiation of divergent design intentions among opposing architects. And on the other, the re- duction of the real-scale mock-up to a visual object, resulted into the infamously compromised climatic performance of the Secretariat building, the users of which would ultimately have to antagonistically negotiate their thermal comfort with each other for decades to come.
Evangelos Kotsioris is Assistant Curator in Architecture & Design at The Museum of Modern Art in New York. Trained as an architect and a historian, his research focuses on the intersections of architecture with science, technology and media. Kotsioris is a co-editor of Radical Pedagogies, a global history of post-WWII experiments in architectural education published by MIT Press in 2022.
Anna-Maria Meister is Professor of Architecture Theory and Science at Technical University of Darmstadt. Her work focus- es on the interdependencies of bureaucratization of design and the design of bureaucracies. She has co-curated the collaborative international research project “Radical Pedago- gies” and co-edited the recently published eponymous book (MIT Press, 2022).
10 WEDNESDAY, 2.11.22 ARE YOU A MODEL?