Opinion Piece: Models Gathering Dust After Final Exhibitions, by Seb Fathi
Around this time of year, architecture students everywhere will have packed up their work from winter final exhibitions, searched their closets or shelves, and found a good corner for their models to collect dust—forever. In this Guest Essay for Gubns guided by a few prompts, Seb Fathi shares his thoughts on the tragic wastefulness of exceptional models that are given a shelf life of just a few weeks - the typical length of architecture Summer Shows and Final Exhibitions - before they’re brought home to be forgotten.
Seb is a BSc Architecture graduate from the Bartlett School of Architecture, UCL and is currently pursuing his MPhil in Architecture and Urban Design at Cambridge.
Can you describe architecture school exhibitions and what you mean by wastefulness?
Architecture schools that focus on design are fantastic. They engage the architecture student as an agent of creativity, and through countless hours of toil, students from these schools have the potential of being industry leaders when it comes to care and thought regarding the models and drawings used to describe their rich proposals. These schools are doing all the right things. At the end of their terms (or commonly at the end of the year before summer) they put on big exhibitions to showcase all this great stuff. Summer shows are great as they allow people from all over to come and engage with interested architectural practice, but they only last a few days or weeks. After that, all the drawings and models go back to the students’ homes, are chucked under the bed and forgotten about forever.
Piscina Mirabilis Model by Kai McLaughlin
Some of these models are masterpieces. Imagine beautifully machined hardwood perfectly interfacing with 3D printed junctions, cast concrete or plaster combining with ceramics, and metalwork akin to that of a jeweler. Imagine huge drawings that take up half a wall with intricate pencil work, hybridizing with careful computer renders, sometimes on multiple layers of cartridge and tracing paper. Sometimes these drawings fuse with model work and you get the best of both worlds.
2019 Bartlett Summer Show / Image by Kai McLaughlin
These shows don’t need to persuade people to be convinced of the building proposals themselves; that’s all taken care of during term time in examinations. Rather, these shows simply need to be museum quality in their execution of work.
Nobody goes around these things caring too much about architecture projects. People go around these things marveling at made work, which is the way it should be. These are beautiful items that have transcended their building proposals and are now largely about the fabricated work itself. But like I said, they soon after become forgotten about forever.
2019 Bartlett Summer Show / Image by Kai McLaughlin
2018 Bartlett Summer Show / Image by Sebastian Fathi
At the very least, architects are supposed to be great advocates of environmental sustainability. At the very least, these items are simply embodied carbon, stolen from the environment. And yet they still end up as single use exhibition items. What a waste. Put one up in your home and love it.
2018 Bartlett Summer Show / Image by Sebastian Fathi
What do you think is at the root of this problem?
I think models and drawings from these shows would be saved and beloved if people could just sever the connection between models/drawings and the architecture proposals they represent.
This would be a terrible idea during term time, since keeping this connection is the whole point of architecture school, but after term time these items become beautiful things and not much more. It’s great if someone looks at this work and considers the proposals they represent, but that’s barely necessary when regarding a lovely object.
I feel like people should just love how well-made and delightful these things are without pointing to them and saying ‘oh well, that can’t be built. Next.’
2018 Bartlett Summer Show / Image by Sebastian Fathi
What do students typically do with their models after the show is over?
Many students look around their house, try and find a nice dark closet with a convenient amount of shelf space, and chuck it all in there. Some however are lucky enough to exhibit them at further shows such as the RA Summer Show, like my friend Kai McLaughlin for example.
Follow Seb on Instagram: @s_e_a_bass