Model Shop

The custom designed in-house modelshop facility at RSHP has been established since 1990 and forms an integral part of the design process. Models communicate on many levels, encapsulating the design intent as a whole as well as being persuasive, beautiful objects in their own right. The department comprises a core of five permanent full-time modelmakers supplemented by freelancers. The workshop has three areas, a large flexible workroom with CAD workstations, an extracted machine space with a separate paint spray room and a photography studio which enables us to produce high quality digital images of models in a short space of time.

We are able to produce many types of model in close collaboration with architects from initial massing models to fully detailed colour presentation or competition models with integral lighting and fibre optics. Materials range from timber through high density foam to fluorescent colour acrylics. Models can range in scale from a 1:10000 masterplan to a 1:1 mock up for a steelwork casting detail and in size from post-it note to king size bed.

As well as using traditional cutting, shaping and vacuum forming machines our modelmakers can work from sketch ideas to produce CAD drawings - these are then used to laser cut a kit of parts in order to construct a high quality model in a time frame that would not have been possible without this technology. There is no house style - every model is designed as a unique response to a specific need within the design process. Particular attention is given to the scaling effects of colour, grain and proportion to avoid a 'toytown' look.

Many of our models are displayed in our reception area, and others are exhibited around the world at MoMA, New York, The Pompidou Centre, Paris, Louisiana Museum, Copenhagen, Denmark, National Building Museum, Washington DC, The Royal Academy of Arts and The Architecture Gallery at the V&A, London, Venice Biennale, Grand Central Station, New York, Art Institute, Chicago.