Paul Thornber | B.15 MODELMAKING WORKSHOP

After many months of hard work from everyone at MSA the end of year show was officially opened at a private view event on Friday. We were pleased to include a new award recognising the use of modelmaking in students coursework.

Judging took place during Friday afternoon where we were joined by representatives from Mecanoo, Professor Tom Jefferies, Dr Ray Lucas to mark the short-listed work in person. From the outset it was clear this was going to be a difficult competition to win due to the high quality of the featured work.

Spending time to look at each piece in detail, the judges marked out of 50 based on our criteria.

The total scores caused a heated debate about the winners resulting in the decision to restructure our prizes from one to three winners for BA (Hons) as final scoring was so close.

Ernst ter Horst and Patrick Arends from Mecanoo noted that they were “inspired by the exceptional level of quality throughout and it’s important to stress these winners were all on a knife edge with scoring”

The winner of the MArch prize was of “outstanding quality and creativity delivering a fascinating model of beguiling interest!”

Winners were:

Overall BA (Hons) Winner – Paul Thornber

Highly Commended BA (Hons) 2nd Place – Sara Hammond

Highly Commended BA (Hons) 3rd Place – Thomas Smith

Winner of the MArch Prize -Â Hajir Alttahir

Individual descriptions of the winning projects written by the students can be found in the complete short list document available to view here.

We are thrilled with the response this award has had and are confident we can continue to recognise the great modelmaking work of our students with this as an annual award. As stated by Mecanoo we would like to repeat how close the scoring for this was and that every project picked was done so because of great quality and individual attitude to making which was believed to be fantastic so well done to everyone this year!

Good luck in your future careers!

Scott and Jim at B.15

MSA Praxis student Paul Thornber produced this ‘rough and ready’ sketch model in just 6 hours and cost him the grand total of Â£0! Made entirely from waste scraps this model clearly conveys the structural arrangement of Pauls project without need for expense or time consuming methods. More importantly the process of planning, marking out and making the model has been a learning experience as Paul describes below:

“I intend to use the model to explore how structural decisions affect spatial conditions.
The model was used to help make decisions, in the development stages, regarding structure through experimentation.I was able to economise on structure through building at scale and assembling the model by hand.It also helped me prove that I understood how the buildings structural strategy worked.

Through making this model I have learnt how to form and develop the plan of a building through a process of experimentation in both 2D and 3D.
Quickly switching from plan to section to model and back again helped me rapidly develop ideas that worked both on paper and in 3D.

This model gave me an insight into the next stage of model making for the final output of the next project. I will now know what works and what doesn’t before starting a more refined version of this model.”

This is how the medium of modelmaking should be used in my opinion. By employing making as a tool to develop your ideas you are opening up yourself to technical processes, material constraints and lessons that can be directly transferred to your design decisions when working at to 1:1 scale design.

You can see more of Pauls work here:Â http://www.paulthornber.com/

Scott

B.15 MODELMAKING WORKSHOP

Architectural Modelmaking, Design Development, Bespoke Design & Construction. Part of The University of Manchester (SEED School of Environment, Education and Development) Part of the Manchester School of Architecture

Tag Archives: Paul Thornber

Mecanoo B.15 Modelmaking Awards

‘Retrofit’ Structural Study Model by Paul Thornber