operative artifacts
Principle Investigator - Alex TimmerUniversity of Wisconsin - Milwaukee
Milwaukee, WI
2018
This show seeks to illuminate the dual role of these models. They are operative: having a function or effect. They are also artifacts: the byproduct of some experiment or process. Each object exists along that spectrum. A few are explicitly artifacts; they are only traces of the operative aspect of their design or intent. While others are purely operative; they are tools that physically perform in the manner in which we wish to study them. A collection of work completed by Assistant Professor Alex Timmer and students here at SARUP, the exhibit acts as a jumping off point for a conversation about the role of making and the physical model in the design process.
Operative. It’s a deceptively simple concept with complex consequences. When we think of architectural models we think of them as objects, representational at best, a stand-in for a larger construct. While this has not always been the case historically, new digital measures seek to further reduce the physical model to merely the output of a printer: a stereotomic afterthought. Renaissance model makers, for example, used the model as a stand-in for construction documents that were intended to assist the builders with complex geometry, calculating structural loads, and testing the quality of light. These models literally participate in the construction of buildings. At the Bauhaus, making was integral to the introductory design exercises, asking students to fold paper and imagine the spatial and sculptural qualities. The paper though was not a stand-in for another material but the material of study itself. With the advent of the digital model, and more recently the BIM model, the physical artifact has been pushed out. In its transformation it has lost its material intelligence and its active role within the design process. It has been reduced to a representational artifact and an imperfect imitation of its digital doppelganger. What then is the role of the contemporary physical model, what could its role be within contemporary design practice?
These new operative artifacts find themselves between a study model and a finished representational model. They hang ambiguously between these two states. They are far from pristine, but they are highly rigorous and intensely participatory. They are objects that both represent a complete thought and speak to a possible future. These objects develop out of an understanding of design as an open system, a series of inputs and outputs, in which the model is understood as an active participant in the design process rather than passive byproduct.