Celebrating supermodels: the oft-unsung heroes of structure

There’s something mesmerising about supermodels. They transfer gracefully, softly lit and elegantly poised, dressed up or down, in keeping with fancy. However no – we’re not speaking about Cindy, Linda, Naomi, Christy and Tatjana right here. That is about architectural fashions – and structure studio Piercy & Firm’s spectacular ‘Supermodels’ exhibition, which opened in London’s Kings Cross (25 November – 11 December 2022), providing a fascinating tackle the artwork of miniature constructing and an usually unseen, and unsung a part of the structure course of. 

‘Supermodels’ by Piercy & Firm

Celebrating the artwork of architectural model-making, and bringing its creations to life via motion, sound, scent and movie, Piercy & Firm goals to underline with this present the significance of partaking extra senses than simply imaginative and prescient (and particularly, nonetheless imagery), when exploring an architectural idea. Contact, listening to, odor, and numerous strategies addressed to seeing, corresponding to mechanical automata, projection and specifically designed mild (composed by lighting studio 18 Levels with lighting tools courtesy of Reggiani), are all employed in an effort to attract the customer into magical worlds of architectural considering.

And draw them, it does. ‘The “coming alive” of the fashions via movie, sound and motion performs into the mysterious attract of objects with a miniature lifetime of their very own – the doll’s home, the cuckoo clock, the mannequin railway. Supermodels seeks to reconnect digital and bodily worlds to evoke a common and childlike sense of surprise,’ says Stuart Piercy, Piercy & Firm’s founding director. 

Supermodels gives a spread of initiatives, sizes and approaches for its viewers to take pleasure in. There’s a trendy chapel – the studio’s award-winning Drayton Inexperienced Church –  an experimental modular metal home in Kew, and a Georgian villa, alongside bigger scale work such a memorial idea. 

All the pieces is immaculately staged, curated with excessive precision and a minimalist – if a bit of industrial-inspired, on this case – perspective and a spotlight to element that prevail in all Piercy & Firm’s works. The venue that hosts the present, one of many studio’s ongoing works, the Jahn Court docket constructing, provides to the drama. 

‘The selection of a uncooked area – at the moment on the usually unseen stage between strip-out and refurbishment – varieties the proper counterpoint to the fashions in “Supermodels”. To intensify this inventive rigidity, our exhibition idea explored the language of building works. We used an uncovered timber framework system for all of the freestanding parts and exhibition furnishings, in a celebration of the utilitarian financial system of the constructing web site,’ says affiliate director Fiona Neil.

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