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Abstract
During the 1930s, Australian architects began to construct miniature scale models employing an increasing variety of materials to simulate in detail the spatial, visual, and material characteristics of proposed buildings. This replacement of a long dominant use of plain and simple models occurred during the years immediately surrounding the Second World War and coincided with a post-war housing boom. Many of Australian’s earliest encounters with such ultra-realistic models of architecture in miniature occurred through children’s doll houses and building sets that were intended to cultivate ideas about order and taste but also a spatial awareness, and creativity. Using models and home advertisements from years surrounding the Second World War, this paper seeks to explore the affective transition of scale architectural models in design practices from a description of form and mass to an object of consumption.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).
Notes
1 See the cover of the Australian Home Beautiful: A Journal for the Home Builder 24, no. 12 (December 1945).
2 “Building Houses from Small Scale Models: A New Method to Assist the Inexperienced,” Australian Home Builder 19 (1925): 62.
3 Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari, What is Philosophy?, trans. Hugh Tomlinson and Graham Burchell (New York: Columbia University Press, 1994; orig. 1991), 164.
4 Maurice Gauthier, “Studying in Three Dimensions,” Pencil Points 7 (1926): 410–11; Royal Rook, “Model Making in the Drafting Room,” American Architect 117, no. 2227 (1918): 250; Margaret J. Postgate, “Architectural Models from Bar Soap,” Pencil Points 10 (1929): 392–96.
5 “The Small Scale Model in Architecture: a Word in Season,” Art and Architecture: The Journal of the Institute of Architects of New South Wales 6, no. 4 (1909): 100–103.
6 Berthold Audsley, “Miniatures and Their Value in Architectural Practice,” Brickbuilder 23 (1914): 213; Edwin S. Parker, “The Model for Architectural Representation,” Architectural Forum 30 (1919): 119; William Boring, “Use of Models in the Study of Architecture,” Architecture 45 (1922): 200; and a shorter article with the same title in Architect and Engineer 60 (1920): 100; William Harvey, Models of Buildings: How to Make and Use Them (London: Architectural Press, 1927), 1; Philip McDonnell, “Models and Their Making,” American Architect 107, no. 2054 (1915): 277. See also Henry Rutgers Marshall, “The Architect’s Tools,” Architectural Review 4 (1897): 55.
7 Boring, “Use of Models in the Study of Architecture,” 200–202.
8 For the value of using models to study and develop ideas in the United States, see Parker, “The Model for Architectural Representation,” 119–20; Boring, “Use of Models in the Study of Architecture,” 100; Audsley, “Miniatures and Their Value in Architectural Practice,” 213; McDonnell, “Models and Their Making,” 277; Harvey, Models of Buildings, 2–4; Eugene Clute, “Models, Their Making and Their Use” in Drafting Room Practice (New York: Pencil Points Press, 1928), 57. For arguments that preliminary study models should be plain and simple, see Harvey, Models of Buildings, 26, 31; Parker, “The Model for Architectural Representation,” 121; Audsley, “Miniatures and Their Value in Architectural Practice,” 213–14; For an early call to use models in Australia see “The Small Scale Model in Architecture,” Art and Architecture, 100–103.
9 The architect is advised to draw the model on a sheet of paper, cut it, fold it, and then add on additional layers, including columns, cornices, and mouldings. Clute, “Models, Their Making and Their Use,” 50–59, 63; McDonnell, “Models and Their Making,” 278–79; Harvey, Models of Buildings, 26–40; Parker, “The Model for Architectural Representation,” 121; Percival Marshall, Wonderful Models (New York: Spon & Chamberlain, 1928), 177. See also Royal Rook, “Model Making in the Drafting Room,” 247; Gauthier, “Studying in Three Dimensions,” 416; J. Price Nunn, “Models and Their Making,” Builder 162 (1942): 553.
10 Harvey Wiley Corbett, “Architectural Models of Cardboard Part IV,” Pencil Points 3 (1922): 14–18; Leroy Grumbine, “Cardboard Models—I,” American Architect and the Architectural Review 122, no. 2399 (1922): 111–14; Leroy Grumbine, “Cardboard Models—II,” American Architect and the Architectural Review 122, no. 2400 (1922): 135–39; Leroy Grumbine, “Cardboard Models—III,” American Architect and the Architectural Review 122, no. 2401 (1922): 177–79.
11 Richters Kunst-Anstalt, Anchor Designs for Architectural Models, No. 4 (Rudolstadt, Thüringen: Dr. Richter’s Publishing House, 1890). The instruction booklet was reprinted circa 1996. On the Kindergarten, see Friedrich Fröbel, Pedagogics of the Kindergarten, trans. Josephine Jarvis (New York: D. Appleton, 1896), 118, cited by Norman Brosterman, Inventing Kindergarten (New York: Harry N. Abrams, 1997), 50.
12 For Meccano, see Brenda Vale and Robert Vale, Architecture on the Carpet: the Curious Tale of Construction Toys and the Genesis of Modern Buildings (New York: Thames & Hudson, 2013) and the numerous objects in the collection of the Museum of Applied Arts and Sciences, Sydney (MAAS), https://collection.maas.museum/search?q=meccano; for Dometo, see the MAAS collection, https://collection.maas.museum/object/127133.
13 Vale and Vale, Architecture on the Carpet. For Wenebrik, see the leaflet “Indoor Pastimes for Boys & Girls,” British Trade Exhibition, Melbourne, 1928 (Museums Victoria Collections, https://collections.museumsvictoria.com.au/items/252232). For Minibrix, see the set in the MAAS collection, https://collection.maas.museum/object/108980. See also Basil Harley, Constructional Toys (Buckinghamshire: Shire Publications Ltd, 1990).
14 See, for example, the Playthings catalogues of the Sydney-based toy store Walther and Stevenson, who had a saddlery on Hunter Street in 1900 and expanded their business to toys as a sideline. By the 1930s their catalogue Playthings, billed as a “toyshop in a book,” boasted to contain every toy that any boy or girl could want.
15 Matthew Mindrup, “The Merz Mill and the Cathedral of the Future,” Interstices 14 (2013): 49–58, after Kurt Schwitters, “Merz,” Der Ararat 2, no. 1 (1921): 3–9; Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, “Hochhäuser,” Frühlicht 1, no. 4 (1922): 122–24.
16 Ida van Zijl, Gerrit Rietveld (London: Phaidon, 2010), 131, 191; Terence Riley, The International Style: Exhibition 15 and The Museum of Modern Art (New York: Rizzoli, 1992), 81.
17 “Model Making by Architects: An Interesting Communication from a Reader Who Strongly Approves the Work Begun at Columbia University,” American Architect 118 (1920): 749–50; Boring, “Use of Models in the Study of Architecture,” 202. The examination results from the Diploma of Architecture course at the Sydney Technical College were published in February 1932. See: “Sydney Technical College Department of Architecture Examination Results 1931,” Architecture: An Australasian Review of Architecture and the Allied Arts and Sciences 21, no. 2 (1932): 51.
18 Jane Jacobs, “The Miniature Boom,” Architectural Forum 108 (1958): 106–11, specifically 109. See also Teresa Fankhänel, “Introducing Theodore Conrad or Why We Should Look at the Architectural Model Maker?” in Les maquettes d'architecture. Fonction et évolution d'un instrument de conception et de réalisation, ed. Sabine Frommel and Raphaël Tassin (Paris: Picard; Roma: Campisano Editore, 2015), 259–68, specifically, 259–60.
19 Jacobs, “The Miniature Boom,” 109–10; see also Arthur E. Herman, “Models of Plastics and Aluminum,” Progressive Architecture 40 (1959): 9–11.
20 Arthur Herman, Freedom’s Forge: How American Business Produced Victory in World War II (New York: Random House, 2012), 71.
21 Stuart Macintyre, Australia’s Boldest Experiment: War and Reconstruction in the 1940s (Sydney: NewSouth Publishing, 2016).
22 “Building Houses from Scale Models: A New Method to Assist the Inexperienced,” Australian Home Builder 19 (1925): 62.
23 See the asbestos-cement homes exhibition advertisement in The Australian Home Beautiful 25, no. 1 (1946): 33.
24 See the cover of the Australian Home Beautiful 25 no. 4 (1946).
25 “An Immediate Post-war Home,” Australian Home Beautiful 25, no. 3 (1946): 18–19.
26 “Considering Readers Plans,” Australian Home Beautiful 25, no. 12 (1946): 9, 24–25.
27 “Little Home with Long Legs,” Australian Home Beautiful 26, no. 11 (1947): 28–29.
28 “General Electric has Made Your Dream House Come True!” advertisement in Life 24, no. 25 (1948): 78.
29 “This Will Be Our Home,” Australian Home Beautiful 28, no. 6 (1949): 24–25.
30 “Model Before You Build,” Life 33, no. 13 (1952): 57–58.
31 The first issue was “The Home Beautiful Pay-Your-Way House,” Australian Home Beautiful 29, no. 9 (1950): 35. Subsequent issues detailed how the homeowner would construct the house from foundations to details.
32 Suburbanism (Parkville, Vic.: George Paton Gallery, 1988).
33 As a business, Finecraft Scale Models first appeared in the Sydney telephone directory in 1947 and ran advertisements in Architecture: An Australasian Review of Architecture and the Allied Arts and Sciences in 1949. See Architecture 37, no. 4 (1949): vi and Sydney Telephone Directory (1947), http://nla.gov.au/nla.obj-1127625902. Edwin B. Ryan first appears in the Sydney Telephone Directory in 1949: http://nla.gov.au/nla.obj-1181390225.
34 “Student’s Designs,” Architecture 40, no. 1 (1952): 42–47.
35 Advertisement of Finecraft Scale Models in Architecture 42, no. 2 (1954): 110.
36 Flora Gill Jacobs, A History of Dolls’ Houses (New York: Scribner, 1965). See also Nicola Lisle, Life in Miniature: A History of Dolls’ Houses (Barnsley: Pen and Sword History, 2020).
37 Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari, A Thousand Plateaus, trans. Brian Massumi (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1987; orig. 1980), 284–87.
38 Nelson Goodman, Ways of Worldmaking (Indianapolis, IN: The Harvester Press, 1978).
39 Benedict de Spinoza, The Ethics, III, D3 in A Spinoza Reader: The Ethics and Other Works, ed. and trans. Edwin Curley (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1994).
40 Deleuze and Guattari, What is Philosophy? 167.
41 Umberto Eco, “The Poetics of the Open Work,” in The Open Work, trans. Anna Cancogni (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1989), 1–24.
42 Jean Baudrillard, The System of Objects, trans. James Benedict (London: Verso, 1968), 8.
43 Baudrillard, The System of Objects, 22.
44 Jim Kemeny, The Great Australian Nightmare: A Critique of the Home-ownership Ideology (Melbourne: Georgian House, 1983); Chris Paris, Andrew Beer and Will Sanders, Housing Australia (South Melbourne: Macmillan, 1993).
45 Jim Kemeny, “A Political Sociology of Home Ownership in Australia,” Australian and New Zealand Journal of Sociology 13, no. 1 (1977): 47–52; Alastair Greig and Nicholas Brown, Home Magazines and Modernist Dreams: Designing the 1950s House (Canberra: Urban Research Program, Research School of Social Sciences, Australian National University, 1995).
46 Nunn, “Models and Their Making,” 553.
47 The earliest reference to Theodore Conrad as the “dean of models” is probably Carter E Hornsley, “Modelmakers’ Work Gaining New Recognition,” New York Times, July 28, 1974, 283; Teresa Fankhänel, “Introducing Theodore Conrad”, 259–68.
Additional information
Notes on contributors
Matthew Mindrup
Matthew Mindrup is a Sydney-based architect and architectural-historian whose research explores the role of materials, and especially physical models for the conception and construction of architecture. He lectures broadly and publicly on this subject and those of his books including The Material Imagination (Routledge, 2015), his co-translation of Bruno Taut’s 1919 anthology The City Crown (Routledge, 2015) and the first comprehensive history of the architectural model and its uses entitled The Architectural Model: Histories of the Miniature and the Prototype, the Exemplar and the Muse (MIT Press, 2019).