1 Models:
This term is commonly used about little things representing bigger things – usually ones that do or did exist. Often, in architecture and other design areas, the bigger things are intended to exist in the future. Sometimes for explanation, models are larger than their tiny referents. Non-physical models are frequently mathematical or statisical but also take other forms and drift toward metaphors. Essentially the role of a model is to be a representation or simulation of the past, present, or future operation of some system, even when that system is object-like, and to be so in a manner useful to an enquirer. A town, a system of government, or a train might serve as the model for another, potentially later example. By extension, this gives rise to uses concerned with emulation of an exemplar with sometimes curious outcomes and underlies senses such as artists’ and fashion models and ‘model husband’. The term ‘model’ is also used to distinguish products – such as one phone, car, or camera from another. Model was a verb in English in the late 16th century prior to serving as a noun initially relating to drawings. The extension of the use to mathematics, computers, art, fashion, and products came about in the 20th century.

I mostly make physical models. They are models of ideas. Each is inevitably a concoction of ideas sheltering under a unifying title. They are not models of physical things which exist, or did exist, or are intended to exist in the future – although they may allude to such things; they model nothing but themselves. They are neither smaller, nor bigger than themselves – if a referent appears larger, no scaled reduction has been undertaken, rather the essence, or sometimes barely a tincture, of an idea has been coerced into service. Likewise, I doubt they are informative expansions of something tiny – but I do not know the size or conformation of an idea or where it might be in its natural habitat. Those ideas abroad in the models can only derive from my extant knowledge at the time of making and my understanding of the concepts I have sought to employ, or those I recall or discover during making. My ideas and approaches are grounded in architecture and other design areas, but they are melded with my probing and rummaging in realms such as music, ballet, art, ecological psychology, philosophy, cybernetics, sciences – my wanderings have been extensive. Metaphors abound, because I lasso ideas and distil them (perhaps translate them) into physical form; the models allude, they project, and they engage treasured ideas captured from diverse sources. With varying degrees of licence, difficulty, and modification many of these models might be constructed at a larger scale.

Maybe they are not models; I have been told by a jeweller they are jewellery. When asked, another jeweller told me with certainty that they were not jewellery. I have been told they are, and are not, art and or sculpture. If I say they are models I am quizzed as to what they are models of. I content myself with the claim that I make models.

2 Architecture:
As an activity or as a set of things or even images and designs for things that are building-like, architecture is ill-defined. The only people I know of who know what architecture is, do not. It always slips from their definitional grasp in defiance; it is no easier to define than anything else interesting. Here, the term should be construed in an expansive and inclusive sense. Architecture is much more extensive than most people think of it as being judging by the conversations I have found myself in and much of what I read. This includes architects – choose five architects and they could present and defend at least seventeen definitions. It might be sensible to define architecture as the sum of what architects do and have done, and thereby capture the breadth of approaches and activities over history. (This ploy has problems if I simply consider my year through a very constrained and elective-free architecture course in the 1960s because my cohort has done so much music, art, theatre, law, management, finance … Perhaps the definition could be limited to architecture-like activities and output, but the boundary drawing issues remain.)

Specifically in my case, although I have hovered in and around architecture through research and teaching, I have predominantly been peripheral to the everyday practise of architecture despite my very focused undergraduate architectural education and a limited career as a practitioner – which was only full-time prior to becoming an academic. The architecture of these models was formed by my journeying through, around, and beyond architecture and was, in turn, informed by them as they became an area of research into designing and making and hence aided my understanding of the production of knowing and knowledge.

3 Making:
The term is explored throughout the texts and images of this website and broadly means what the reader thinks – something is made that was not previously present. Understood thus, designing is making, as a design is produced through a process of making that results in a design outcome (if a design can be said to be finished). There are many other makings: soup and music are made, as are photographs and ballet. In this project I am concerned with clearly showing that designing in areas such as architecture is not a separate act that precedes any making – the whole is a process, a doing resulting in an outcome that emerges as this process proceeds. There is a lengthy erroneous history describing an imaginary process in which designing – once meaning lines drawn on paper – is undertaken and completed prior to making of any sort being undertaken. This account is rendered incorrect by any admission of three-dimensional exploratory and modifiable mock-ups being undertaken to aid designing thus defined.

Designing/making is integrally a means of researching, of producing knowing. This, too, is explored across the sections that follow and linked to other writings of mine at the end.

4 Researching
This is finding out about stuff. The 16th century English meaning was simply ‘enquiry into things’. It has become a formalised pursuit in different disciplines leading to the production of knowledge. Here, one of my fascinations is the production of knowing through the doing of designing and making. My process is not bound by a prescribed set of methods or an overarching methodology that examines, prescribes, and proscribes permissible research actions and paths. Most kindly, it could be labelled thoughtful eclecticism.

5 The Project:
On 21 February 1996, I began what surprisingly became a multi-decade project by drawing an idea. Initially, I thought it would be fun to build a (vaguely architectural) model because I had not done so for a few years. I corralled materials and tools at hand, bought some small sections of timbers, pushed back my computer keyboard, began at my desk, and coaxed two outdoor tables into occasional service.

Looking at the image of mess on top of mess, I find difficulty imagining a model emerged, but I can recognise elements of the first model and identify both materials and tools. By November, I had completed two models and a hint of a third one. The project slowed and spluttered as I became head of a newly formed multi-disciplinary academic school in the following year. The next four models took more than five years to build. Lessons from the outset meant the process became intensely self-reflective. It evolved into an exploration of designing and making as one symbiotic process, which in turn enabled the theorising of the production of design knowing and knowledge through this inherently introspective and personal researching activity. From 1996 I offered seminars to post-graduate design students (and initially to undergraduates) which drew on the thinking around my making. My writing paralleled my making, and they cross-pollenated one another.

The researching through making shown in this website and elaborated in published books and papers over thirty years encapsulates the idea that these models are epistemic artefacts that embody, carry, and hopefully convey knowing and knowledge to myself and others. Most of the models have not been published elsewhere or shown in talks, and only ten have been exhibited.

At the time of writing, the models can be grouped into the following collections:

A. Six Epistemological Pavilions – Etude Series,
B. Four Epistemological Pavilions – Prelude Series,
C. Two Bridging Pavilions which are transitional to collection D,
D. Six Machines for Making,
E. Twelve Bagatelles for Victor Silvestrov,
F. Eight Houses ‘of’, and
G. A set of Houses ‘for’.

In addition to the photographs and texts on the models there is a set of other texts which I have labelled ‘Integral, Adjacent, and Symbiotic Matters’. These largely concern thoughts that arise from the models, try to describe some aspect of their making, and issues which influence and shape the modelling. Included in this is a bibliography where I have selected from my writings works on the models that concern the conceptualisation of researching through designing and making, as distinct from the stories here where I have been more focused on what they are, and the ideas they draw on and develop.