In continuation of our individual extended interviews on modelmaking for B.15:45 here is Principal Lecturer Sally Stone talking about the uses of models in her Atelier, Continuity in Architecture.
Tag Archives: B.15: 45 YEARS
Mecanoo B.15 Modelmaking Award
We are very pleased to announce in conjunction with our 45th year celebrations a new award for outstanding modelmaking at MSA.
The award will be sponsored by award winning architects Mecanoo who have recently expanded their offices to include a new Manchester branch.
“Model making is integral to the design process at our headquarters in Delft and we place a great deal of value in students who can demonstrate a love for the physical crafting and communication of space in architecture, landscape architecture, and urban design.
As such, Mecanoo is proud to sponsor an award which recognises high quality model making skills at Manchester School of Architecture – a school in a city which has become our UK home. We hope that this prize will encourage final year students to push that little bit harder to make their models as experimental, pragmatic (and beautiful) as possible!”
Francesco Veenstra (partner in charge of UK projects)
The Awards
Two prizes will be awarded with one for BA 3rd Year students and one for 6th Year MArch Students. Prizes will be awarded at the end of year show on June 12th.
Representatives from Mecanoo will be in attendance and along with UoM and MSA staff will judge the winners.
In addition to the award for your portfolio, sponsorship from Mecanoo and ourselves will provide a cash prize of £500 per winner.
Models will be judged on their overall quality, choice of scale, material choices, chosen methods and the models effectiveness at conveying your design features.
We hope this gives you more of an incentive to think about your modelmaking skills and strive to improve on the great results we have already seen this year!
Good luck!
Jim and Scott at B.15
B.15:45 Extended Interview with Eamonn Canniffe
As part of our B.15:45 Exhibition we put together a short film telling the story of how modelmaking is used in the life of an architecture student and beyond. The full versions of the interviews tell many more interesting stories of modelmaking with individual case studies and memories accounted first hand by staff past and present.
In this first extended interview with MSA Principal Lecturer Eamonn Canniffe we hear about how history models have been used as precedent examples and tools in understanding space as well as thoughts on the introduction of digital tools to the school over the past 30 years.
Thank you to all who took part and supported Modelmaking in the Digital Age
Just a quick message to everyone who came to speak and helped us make yesterday’s symposium event possible. We thoroughly enjoyed the day and everyone was extremely positive about our approach to modelmaking and it’s future in architecture.
In all we had 90+ registered guests from a variety of backgrounds all with a shared interest of the subject. Thank you for all your support, it means a lot.
The event was full of interesting presentations and discussions that we are hopeful will lead to further expansion and future events orientated around the subject of how we use models in architecture.
We will be uploading footage of the event for those who missed it in the coming months so stay tuned for those.
Many thanks to all again – we can’t thank you enough!
Scott and Jim
Modelmaking in the Digital Age Symposium Running Order
We are happy to announce the following guide to our Symposium ‘Modelmaking in the Digital Age‘ taking place this Monday 9th March.
These time serve as a guide and we will endeavour to stick to them but expect some under and overrun due to the amount of material we are trying to fit into the day.
Registration is now for the symposium is now closed.
09.00 Tea and Coffee available in the foyer
9.30 Chair Dr Ray Lucas Intro
9.45-10.30 Nick Dunn
10.30-11.15 Ken Grix
11.15-12.00 James Smith
12.00 Morning Summary and open Q+A
12.30 – 13.45 Lunch break / Exhibition and Workshop open to visitors
13.45 Welcome Back
14.00 – 14.45 Milena StavricÂ
14.45 – 15.30 Foster and Partners
15.30- Closing Address and Q+A
Vacate Theatre by 16.00
Look forward to seeing you all on Monday!
Scott and Jim
Foster + Partners Join B.15:45 ‘Modelmaking in the Digital Age’ Symposium
We are pleased to announce that Foster + Partners will be joining our ‘Modelmaking in the Digital Age’ Symposium taking place on March 9th.
As one of the biggest architectural practices in the world, this presentation from Foster + Partners will add an insight into the ever present use of architectural modelmaking in projects taking place worldwide.
Additional speakers from Foster + Partners will be:
Gregor Anderson, Associate Partner at Foster + Partners and manager of the in-house Rapid Prototyping Facility. Gregor studied at the Royal College Of Art where he focused his research on all forms of digital manufacturing. On graduating, he was a key member in the development of Rapidform, the RCA’s in house additive manufacturing unit. In 2008 he moved to UCL to set up and run The Digital Manufacturing Centre in the Bartlett School of Architecture, before joining Foster + Partners in 2011.
Ed Bartlett, Associate and Modelshop CAD Support Manager at Foster + Partners. Ed joined the practice in 2008 after graduating from the Arts University Bournemouth, where he studied Modelmaking for Design and Media, specialising in computer-aided design. He now heads up a team of CAD specialists within the practice, working on a wide variety of projects around the world.
We look forward to seeing you there!
 
‘Modelmaking in the Digital Age’ Symposium, 9th March 2015
B.15:45 Presents….
As part of our continued look at the role of Modelmaking in Architecture we are very pleased to announce our upcoming symposium event: Modelmaking in the Digital Age
The day will comprise of a series of talks and discussions around the subject of modelmaking in architecture, in particular the impact the introduction of digital tools has had on the approach to making and learning with models.
Registration for the symposium has now closed.
Confirmed Speakers for the event are:
Ken Grix, Architect and Modelmaker at Feilden Clegg Bradley Studios, Bath. Since 1999 Ken has been both the inspiration behind and creator of Feilden Clegg Bradley Studios’ concept models, design process models and presentation models. He became a Partner of the company in 2012, and the following year he achieved the great honour of winning the Lend Lease/AJ Grand Award for Architecture at the Royal Academy Summer Exhibition 2013 for his concrete concept models of the Festival Wing, Southbank.
Dr. Milena Stavric, studied Architecture at the University of Belgrade where she also received her PhD. Since 2004 she has worked at the Graz University of Technology, Austria. Author of Architectural Scale Models in the Digital Age: Design, Representation and Manufacture.
James Smith, Director and Head of Architectural Modelmaking at Amalgam Models, Bristol. James joined Amalgam in 2000 having gathered model making experience across the UK for several years, followed by 3 years based in Barcelona where he managed many high profile architectural projects. James became a Director at Amalgam in 2008.
Professor Nick Dunn, Professor of Urban Design at Lancaster Institute for the Contemporary Arts.Previously studied and taught at the Manchester School of Architecture, Author of the international best selling book, Architectural Modelmaking.
Gregor Anderson, Associate Partner at Foster + Partners and manager of the in-house Rapid Prototyping Facility. Gregor studied at the Royal College Of Art where he focused his research on all forms of digital manufacturing. On graduating, he was a key member in the development of Rapidform, the RCA’s in house additive manufacturing unit. In 2008 he moved to UCL to set up and run The Digital Manufacturing Centre in the Bartlett School of Architecture, before joining Foster + Partners in 2011.
Ed Bartlett, Associate and Modelshop CAD Support Manager at Foster + Partners. Ed joined the practice in 2008 after graduating from the Arts University Bournemouth, where he studied Modelmaking for Design and Media, specialising in computer-aided design. He now heads up a team of CAD specialists within the practice, working on a wide variety of projects around the world.
The event will be chaired by our own Dr Raymond Lucas. Dr Lucas has recently been appointed as Head of Architecture in Humanities at the University of Manchester and as such will have a close relationship with our workshop activities in future. His involvement teaching at MSA and research with the Manchester Architectural Research Centre (MARC) however has been ongoing for the last 4 years so Ray is well versed in the active role our cause plays for our students.
The event will be held on March 9th in the Cordingley Lecture Theatre here at the University of Manchester’s Humanities Bridgeford Street Building. Presentations will begin at 09.30am and will continue throughout the day with Q & A sessions and general discussions around the subject concluding no later than 16.00.
Further updates to the event will be posted here leading up to the event.
Tickets are no longer Available
Registration for the symposium is now closed.
For those who have registered We’ll see you on Monday!
B.15:45 PRESENTS: ‘MAKER’ & ‘DESIGN & THINKING’ DOCUMENTARIES SCREENING, THURSDAY 4TH DECEMBER
As part of our ongoing look at the role of Modelmaking in design, B.15:45 presents a screening of two highly acclaimed documentaries on the design and making field.
The two documentaries will be shown back to back from 17.30 on Thursday 4th December in the Cordingley Lecture Theatre in Humanities Bridgeford Street Building (Kantorowich Building where the B.15 Workshop and Exhibition are located)
Each film lasts approximately 70 minutes.
FREE ADMISSION
Here is an overview and trailer for each film:
Maker
‘Maker’ is a feature-length documentary that looks into the current maker movement in America – a new wave of Do-It-Yourself and Do-It-Together fueled by passion and powered by the advent of new technologies.Â
The ‘Maker Movement’, sometimes called the ‘Third Industrial Revolution,’ subverts traditional manufacturing by building on innovative concepts such as open source, local manufacturing, crowd funding, and digital fabrication. Breaking the hobbyist movement stereotype, ‘Maker’ delves deep into this ecosystem of design and manufacturing in the Internet era. The film explores the ideas, tools, and personalities that are driving the Maker Movement – and returns with a timely snapshot of one of the transforming influences of the current age.Â
Design & Thinking
Inspired by design thinking, this documentary grabs businessmen, designers, social
change-makers and unlikely individuals to portray what they have in common when
facing this ambiguous 21st century.
Synopsis:
How do we fully engage organizations to think about the changing landscape
of business, culture and society? Inspired by design thinking, this documentary grabs
businessman, designers, social change-makers and unlikely individuals to portrait
what they have in common when facing this ambiguous 21st century. What is design
thinking? How is it applied in business models? How are people changing the world
with their own creative minds? It is a call to the conventional minds to change and
collaborate.
B.15:45 Exhibition Review By Mirko Avalos Henriquez
Mirko Avalos Henriquez, A professional Modelmaker working in Berlin visited our exhibition recently and wrote this review in response.
The B.15:45 Architectural Modelmaking Exhibition at the Manchester school of Architecture offers a glimpse of the types of models used in the design and development of architectural ideas and concepts. The layout of the exhibition takes you on a journey through the various uses a model affords, from initial exploration of shapes, forms, materials and textures to refined and detailed representations of final design solutions.
The exhibition lets one clearly see how the process of using a model as an exploratory tool is in itself a vital component of the overall design process. Much like a sketch book of scribbles on a visual communication course or a book of fabric and colour samples on a fashion design course, the model can be used as a vehicle allowing one to visualise ideas in progress. The curators of the exhibition have organized the models in such a way that it is easy to make out the purpose of the model, through varying scales, materials, level of detail and colour. Technological advances in the production of a model or its component parts is also on show here with clear advantages and disadvantages in using new technologies and media evident in the quality of finish of a model.
We get to see structural details rendered large as well as whole city districts in a scale of 1:1000, suggestions for fantastical underwater prisons and futuristic 3D printing factories where whole buildings can be quickly produced. There are projects that are explained through a highly detailed series of models alongside more abstract explorations in shape and colour. From wood to copper, 3D printed parts to moulded plaster, the models on show cover a range of fascinating materials, production techniques and level of detail.
The art of model making and its use as a vital tool in the design process is presented in detail through lovingly preserved and at times repaired examples of models. Scott and Jim have done a fantastic job of making it easy to navigate this fundamental but often overlooked component to the study of architecture. The B.15:45 Architectural Modelmaking Exhibition is a must-see not only for those interested in architecture but also for those curious to know what goes into the exploration and development of a design idea and how this creative principle is approached.
Mirko Avalos Henriquez, October 2014
You can find out more about Mirko’s experience in our profile post here.
B.15:45 Professor Nick Dunn Opening Speech 12th September 2014
As part of our opening night for B.15:45 Professor Nick Dunn kindly gave a short speech about the origins of modelmaking through to present day. For those who don’t know, Professor Dunn is a former student here at Manchester who then went on to teach at MSA and is the author of one of, if not the most successful architectural Modelmaking book to date, ‘Architectural Modelmaking’ which is now in it’s second edition.
His speech was filmed in it’s entirety and you can watch it below: