- The site model for design studio
Site model has always been my weakness of model making. So when I enrolled in this course, the first ideal model that I would like to make is a decent site model. In fact, during the Research Studio last semester, I have made a huge site model covering the entire Waterloo area together with my studio colleagues. However, our hand-making skills are not that good, the model turned out to have too many glue marks and the cuttings are not straight enough. All these little details adding up made the final outcome of the model not that neat and tidy. So I wanted to try new techniques with the help of machines in the beginning and hope that I can get a better result.
During the research stage, I have found a precedent of L.A. city model. I think it can fit into my studio site and achievable for me using the tools and techniques I learned in this course. I have a close look at the precedent model and discussed with my colleagues whether to use CNC milling or laser cut machine to make the base. And at last, we decided to use CNC, because it won’t leave burn marks or glue stain, unlike laser cut. It looks more clean and neat since it is one piece instead of adding up pieces by pieces.
I have not used CNC milling before, and while during the instruction session I was told that it’s better to operate under Rhino rather than Sketchup, since Sketchup will form some kind of messy lines and the machine will have difficulty to read the file. But the problem is that I don’t know how to make the digital model using Rhino and have always been working with Sketchup. So I decided to build a model in Sketchup and ask for other classmate’s help to export my Sketchup file into Rhino.
The buildings will be 3D printed and I printed several small pieces for testing.
The buildings will be 3D printed and I printed several small pieces for testing.
Also during doing the digital model, I found it really hard to create irregular shape terrain and make street void on it. It took me a long time to fix the terrain and trim the excess part of the buildings to the model’s edge. 
Seeing CNC milling machine working so accurately is such a pleasure! It has some rough bits of wood on the milled edges, and I used the grinding wheel to polish it.
Picking up 3D printed buildings. To print them faster, I set the printing speed fast. So the surface looks a bit rough, but I will sand them smoother and spray paint them into an even white colour.
I found after milling a layer out, the exposed inside of the plywood had some darker colour marks and didn’t look that good. I’m afraid that these marks will distract the focus of the model, so I tried to paint it with watercolour.
Colour testing.
Brushing.
At this point, the buildings were painted into white already (which is pretty smelly and I regretted to do it in my room ). And the base is totally dry already. I then needed to stick the buildings on the base referring to the digital model.
And for my own project proposal, I have laser cut using white and clear acrylic to differ from the surrounding buildings.
Final look.
Getting new skills and techniques are exciting. I used to feel refused to use such techniques and machines and felt them hard to do, but once I opened the new gate, I found them not that far from my ability at all. And the tools do bring a lot of ease to our work and life. And I definitely need to strengthen my software skills and start to learn Rhino!
2. The Concept model
I have never made a concept model before. Such a model doesn’t need to show accurate structures, circulations or other architectural elements. All it needs to do is a clear design concept and in my case, it needs to emphasis the composition of spaces and differentiate between open and closed space. I think adding a concept model as a part of my design presentation will fill up the design process and explain more of my thinking to the audience.
In the beginning, I found a precedent like this, then I think I can make the closed space out of other heavier and denser material to differ from the light and transparent look of the acrylic box representing open space, which is resin.
To make the acrylic boxes I used laser cutting machines, which I have used many times before, so there is no difficulty at this part. The difficulty is to make the vegetations and furniture to represent different activities of the space. The model is 1-200 scale. There are few real plants can fit into such size so I need to make ‘artificial’ vegetations out of real plants to fit the size. I went to the flower market and bought many local bush plants. I trimmed them into bits and tried to stick them into bunches to make a tree. I tried UHU, super flue and blue tack. They all can’t glue them together properly. So I got a glue gun and it can do the job. The laser-cut little human figures and 3D printed lots of mini furniture.
The most tricky part for this model is definitely the resin moulding. I have always wanted to do a resin mass to seal something to display, but this is for the first time that I really start to do by my own hands. There are 2 liquid and need to mix according to accurate ratio to make the solvent hard. It takes days to dry and they are pretty expensive and cost many wastages during making, so I have to test little by little and one piece once testing.
1st attempt--fail. Hardener not enough, cannot turn into solid. And the acrylic mode kept leaking.
2nd attempt--Try to use plastic sheet to make mode and use the glue gun to seal up the edge. Success.
3rd attempt--Try to add more hardener liquid and ad little furniture. Success.
4th attempt--Try to add pigment to represent different functions. Success.
After making sure the ratio is all correct and lots of modes are made, I was ready to pour all the mode with resin and wait for them to dry.
Final look.
From this model, I got the skill and experience of making resin. The process is not always successful, and the liquid is also quite sticky and messy, but the outcome is really good. I even made myself a little souvenir!
3. SANAA 21st century museum of contemporary art
This building is a precedent for my project of the urban design studio. Its plan layout is so unique and organised. It archived a perfect geometrical composition and broke the traditional space organisation of the public building. So I took a lot of inspiration from this building to my design. In the beginning, I would like to make a section model of this building and tried to explore more details from this building especially its structure. But later I found that the structure information of this building is so little and my design also changed many throughout this term, so I decided to go back and express its essential design focus—geometrical layout, which I think have more to learn from.
From this floor plan, I can clearly see the dimensions of each space. And then I made the digital model in Sketchup according to the plan and elevations.
From Sketchup model, I turned to AutoCAD to draw the laser cutting pieces. Through these times of using laser cut machine, I have found out my best workflow for the file presentation stage. I started from the 3D model, then start to draw pieces in AutoCAD, and at this point, I need to be mindful of the actual thickness of the material so that the dimension of wall needs to be deducted by the material thickness, which is a bit tricky to calculate. Then in AutoCAD, select the cutting lines and set them to red and the crave lines to blue, by doing so the exported pdf file will be in RGB red and blue straight away, which is exactly the machine wanted.
The dimensions were calculated wrong, cannot fit each other.
Cut again using the left cuts. This is another trick with laser-cut—try to make the best use of the material!
Final look. I made the roof translucent to make the geometrical composition standout.
Among the three models, this one actually is the easiest to make technically and time-wise. But while shooting photos I found this is the one that can easily give out the best outcome, I realised that good design really makes everything much easier.
4. Lastly—photo shooting
I took the photos in my house. I don’t have a clean white wall as a background. So I grabbed two black T-shirt and hanged them against the wall as black background. And use the support of an electronic keyboard to hold the models and took the photos at night time. I used the flashlight of my mobile phone as polishing and took hundreds of photos. Then use photoshop for further production. I didn’t take photos of models so carefully before. I used to just bring them to campus during the presentation and use the phone to take a few random pictures. After seeing the difference of the outcomes, I think I will treat my models better since they can be a highlight to my portfolio.
