Page 18 - Are-You-a-Model?

9:00 Oliver Elser Deutsches Architekturmuseum
Introduction:
On models in participatory processes
Models seem to promise easier access for non-experts than highly codified media such as construction drawings; it is also taken to not pre-set the point of view from which it is being seen. It may seem as if models are inherently participatory objects—a simulation toward a more inclusive future, be it through city models of new infrastructure or technological measures such as endoscopes to look at architecture from a pedestrian’s point of view; all at the same time when processes were developed to allow for other ways of participation of non-experts, alternative points of view or models open to interpretation.
9:15 Maxime Zaugg ETH Zürich
In the eye of the beholder:
New representation techniques for public urban scale models
With the emergence of public participation in urban design in Europe during the 1960s, the physical ur- ban scale model became essential as a mediator between professionals and the public. However, the degree to which the urban scale model engages the public in urban discourses and projects depends on different factors. While technical properties such as scale, abstraction, and materiality are important for the readability of the urban model, the sceno- graphic staging of the models in public exhibitions and presentations influences their interaction with the audience. The agency of urban scale models is also heavily affected by techniques of representa- tion, including photographic and cinematographic representations in printed popular media and filmed models on television.
This paper explores the impact of evolving representation techniques on the ability of the ur- ban scale model to engage the public. It focuses on the technique of ‘relatoscopy’, investigating the project of Les Halles in Paris from the 1960s to the 1980s. A technique of photographing models with an endoscope, resulting in images from the human eye's perspective, relatoscopy, first conceived and employed in architecture and urban design by the French architect Martin Schulz van Treeck, allowed the public to better understand the model. Howev- er, relatoscopy transformed the perception of the model from a bird’s-eye view, which leaves the au- dience room for interpretation, to a perception of the model at human-eye level, from ‘within’, which leaves less room for interpretation. This technique therefore allows more control and manipulation of the perspectives conveyed.
Maxime Zaugg is an architect and doctoral candidate at the Chair of the History and Theory of Urban Design at ETH Zürich. His dissertation, entitled ‘Exploring Urban Models’, researches how strong performative and participative char- acteristics have enabled urban scale models to play a key role in urban planning, focusing particularly on the period from the late 1960s to the 1990s.
9:00 – 11:00
3 Give me access!
Oliver Elser is a curator at the Deutsches Architekturmuse- um (DAM) in Frankfurt am Main. He is the co-founder of the Center for Critical Studies in Architecture (CCSA), and has been visiting professor for architecture theory at the KIT in Karlsruhe in 2021. In 2016 he was the curator of Making Hei- mat, the German Pavilion at the Venice Architecture Biennale.
18 THURSDAY, 3.11.22 ARE YOU A MODEL?