Architecture in Miniature
Supermodels by Piercy&Company (image: Andy Stagg).
Hung by the toilets within Supermodels, a new exhibition from architects Piercy&Company, are a trio of white cuckoo clocks, woodily hoot-whistling whenever their sensors detect a person walking past.
“I love cuckoo clocks,” the practice’s founder Stuart Piercy explains, pointing out that one of the cuckoos, the final bird in the trio, is hung high enough such that few people are likely to activate its sensor as they move past on their way to the bathrooms. “We did that for children,” he says. “They start running from across the room so they can jump up and try to get it.”
North South by Piercy&Company (image: Andy Stagg).
Well, forgive me for starting in the loos, but the cuckoos capture something important about Supermodels, one of the architecture exhibitions that I have enjoyed most this year: it doesn’t skimp on whimsy and accessibility. It is nominally a display of architecture models (eight to be precise, each of which is an either built or unbuilt Piercy&Company project), but the models go far beyond what you typically see in exhibitions of this kind. The eight models have been animated – whether as mechanical automata that crack apart a building’s envelope like a jewellery box, or else through sound, projection and light that alternately reveal and obscure the detailing of a model – and the results make for enchanting viewing. These are buildings as music boxes, Mechanical Turks and theatre dioramas; models that aim to draw you in and delight as much as they aspire to educate about architectural process. The best compliment I can pay Supermodels it is that I think non-architects will like it too – which is not always the case when it comes to exhibitions of this kind.
The show is hosted in the Jahn Court building near London’s King’s Cross, a space that Piercy&Company have stripped out as part of an ongoing project, but not yet begun construction on. “Both the models and the site require you to imagine the finished results,” notes Cathrin Walczyk, the practice’s studio director. In its present state, Jahn Court is all exposed concrete and raw brick – dark and quasi-monastic while it awaits redevelopment. Scattered against this backdrop, the models become the chief sources of illumination and visual detailing in the building, operating like reliquaries in an otherwise sparse space. There is a map to guide visitors that provides short texts about each model (“A sort of sculpture trail,” in the studio’s words), but no captions are present within the space itself. “The models are kind of their own worlds,” Piercy adds. “We like that they can speak to you in very different ways.”
Steel House by Piercy&Company (image: Andy Stagg).
Flythrough, for instance, is a model based on the practice’s Telephone House proposal, into which a USB camera has been inserted. The camera moves along a set path through the model to show off the space in the style of an architecture walkthrough video, projecting its findings on a nearby screen. The twist, however, is that the model has been built entirely to facilitate its video – huge chunks of the building that would remain unseen in the video have simply not been built, with upper elements of the structure instead propped up on spindles to reveal the void below. It feels a visually inventive means of critiquing the manner in which architecture is mediated through images, and the display also gains spice from the real-world sustainability debate surrounding Telephone House, which proposes to demolish an existing building in favour of a new build. What within our current practice and discourse is hollow, what meaningful? Flythrough provides an elegant means of accessing these issues.
Similar reflections upon the presentation of architecture abound in North South, based on the R8 mixed-use building the practice is developing for King’s Cross. The model has been surrounded by a crescent of spotlights, which illuminate sequentially to show the manner in which perceptions of the building change between sunrise and sunset. It is an effective means of introducing the passage of time to the presentation of buildings, which is typically documented in still imagery shot exclusively in favourable lights, and one whose cinematic quality provides a draw to visitors. “I find how we communicate as a profession so poor and so inaccessible,” Piercy explains. “A lot of [architecture] exhibitions make you feel self-conscious, whereas this is pretty down to earth.” You can read North South as a reflection on designing around the orientation of a building in relation to the sun’s path, or a critique of the manner in which architectural photography flattens and flatters. Alternatively, it’s fine to just enjoy the shadows lengthening and shortening across the model as the artificial day wears on.
Theatre of Work by Piercy&Company (image: Andy Stagg).
There is, then, architectural content within the exhibition and points of reflection for the industry as a whole, but Supermodels wears its themes lightly – some of the models are straightforwardly delightful and simply provide an evocative route into consideration of the architecture they display. Two Villas, for example, depicts two listed Georgian villas, which have been automated such that the building splits down its middle and creaks open, the storeys sliding across each other to the left and right in a manner inspired by Trusco cantilevered toolboxes. As far as I can tell, there is no deeper point about architecture to be gleaned from its automation, bar a reminder of the pleasures that can be taken in models and the need to find routes to engage audiences in architecture who may not be able to read traditional plans. “With these, you’re not being judged like you might with a drawing,” Piercy says. “They just are what they are.”
It’s a fine sentiment and one that lies at the heart of Supermodels’ success. “As a creative studio, you need to have something that sits outside of the client brief and lets you find your own voice,” says Walczyk. Architecture may be nothing without the social, political and economic structures within which it operates, but Supermodels should be applauded for trying to present aspects of the field that can be viewed and enjoyed, as much as possible, in isolation from these contexts: the pleasures and excitement of creating spaces and seeing those structures brought to life. “As architects, you often wind up being the voice of your client,” says Piercy. “But this is something completely disconnected from that and it’s a means of finding your own voice. Architects are doing this kind of model making work all over the country, but nobody talks about it. We wanted to show it.”
Words Oli Stratford
Supermodels is on display at Jahn Court, Jahn Court, Regent Quarter, 34 York Way, London N1 9AB, until 11 December 2022.