In an era saturated with AI-generated renderings, hyper-realistic CGI, and immersive VR walkthroughs, it might seem that physical model making has become redundant, a relic of architecture’s analogue past.
And yet, despite the extraordinary digital tools at our disposal, physical architectural models not only endure, but they also remain one of the most powerful, thought-provoking forms of architectural communication we have.
Why?
Because they are real. Tangible, tactile, and instantly understandable. By everyone—from a young child to an architectural scholar.
Precious cargo: models on their way to the Venice Biennale
Model Memory and Presence
There’s a physical quality to models that digital media can’t match. We remember models. We remember the weight of them, the smell of the materials, the conversation that happened beside them.
In presentations, they anchor attention. In studios, they become monuments of process. Even years later, models remain objects of memory, far more than a forgotten folder of JPEGs or 3D flythroughs.
One of the first architectural models I remember seeing was Antonio Gaudí’s physical hanging model made of inverted ropes and bags of sand for the Basílica de la Sagrada Família in Barcelona. I was in awe of how this extraordinary simple solution could represent the complex geometries of the catenary vaults.
Today, over a century later, the completion of the Sagrada Família is guided by the same principles but with new tools. 3D scanning, photogrammetry, and laser-cut stone prototypes now guide the ongoing construction. Advanced physical models, many of them 3D printed, are created to test geometries before they’re carved or cast. These models act as a bridge between Gaudí’s original vision and 21st-century technology, ensuring historical fidelity while allowing for practical execution.
A physical model remains an anchor in our memory and it has continued presence. It reminds us that space is not a visual effect, but a physical reality and it allows us to communicate that experience to the people around us.
Antonio Gaudí’s model of the Basílica de la Sagrada Família in Barcelona
Craftsmanship: Buildings and Models
This connection to physical presence resonates deeply with something that has always been at the heart of Purcell’s work: a profound respect for craftsmanship. Whether conserving a medieval roof or designing a new intervention within a historic setting, our practice depends on an intimate understanding of how buildings are made. Craft is not merely a visual preference; it is a mindset, rooted in material knowledge, careful judgement, and the subtle intelligence of the hand.
Model making mirrors this ethos. It, too, is a craft: deliberate, investigative, tactile.
The patience and precision required to cut, fit, adjust, and assemble a model echo the careful processes that define the stewardship of historic places. The slight irregularities of a hand-built model carry the same quiet authenticity as tool marks on timber or the soft variations of hand-carved stone. Both remind us that architecture is shaped by people, not only by pixels.
The Model and the Observer
The digital tools we use today are remarkable in their ability to simulate. They predict light, texture, materiality with astonishing precision. Architecture has always embraced new technologies, and they have their place, but, at the end of the day, they remain simulations, controlled, curated, and ultimately flattened through a screen or confined within a headset.
Physical models, by contrast, are something you experience. You don’t look at a model. You encounter it. You walk around it. You lean in. You share the space with it. Providing an intuitive spatial understanding that no rendering can replicate. They don’t require digital literacy or familiarity with software. A client, a builder, a policymaker, or a neighbour can all gather around the same model and speak the same spatial language. It’s a tool of inclusion, not just persuasion.
The Model and the Designer
For architects too, model making is more than just representation. It’s an essential part of the design process, one that shapes ideas as much as it communicates them.
The physical act of constructing and interacting with models provides a deeper spatial and material understanding and creative thinking. It reveals the logic (or failure) of a design in a way that drawings can’t always show. A plan can mislead you. A drawing can charm you. But a model tells the truth. Mass, proportion, alignment – these become immediately visible, unavoidable, real.
In the early stages of a project, working models made from simple materials, such as paper, card, and foam, are quick to adapt, iterate, and evolve. They become especially powerful in workshops and community engagement sessions, where ideas must be conveyed clearly and quickly to diverse audiences.
And, perhaps most importantly, physical models bring moments of joy and delight to the architectural process. They spark conversation, invite curiosity, and make abstract ideas real.
Our model of Haigh Hall, Wigan, presented at the Venice Biennale
Celebrating the Model
In our industry, we continue to shine a light on the important craft of model making, celebrating its meaningful part in the design process.
The AiM: Architects Index of Modelmaking is a project led by the B.15 Modelmaking Workshop at the University of Manchester. It made its public debut at the 19th Venice Architecture Biennale as part of the Time Space Existence exhibition, held at Palazzo Bembo.
The exhibition showcases work by 15 practices (from both professional and educational contexts) demonstrating a global snapshot of how architectural models are made, used, and valued today. Purcell was delighted to exhibit a model of one of their current projects at Haigh Hall in Wigan, showing one of the design development models created for the project during the early stages.
Made from paper, card and basswood, our model tests out the form and materiality of the new roof terrace intervention and it is intended to be a design tool, not a polished representation of the proposal; even the imperfections, slightly skewed walls, exposed joints, and fraying edges, carry a kind of truth. For me, this model has both facilitated the design process and served as a communication device to the client and wider stakeholders. Seeing the Haigh Hall model exhibited alongside other models cemented my love of model making. The emotional connection to the physicality of the models present was more palatable than if we’d shown a room full of videos or CGI images of the proposal.
Model making is not a nostalgic indulgence, but a reaffirmation of architecture’s material essence. As our tools evolve, the model remains a reminder that ideas must ultimately find form, that the act of making is inseparable from the act of designing. Holding a model in our hands, we hold a piece of the future, something imagined, tested, and made real.
The AiM Architects Index of Modelmaking directory continues online, with a UK exhibition to take place in Manchester in the future.
