But then I see drawings or pictures of models that don’t look anything like real buildings, such as this: Renderings NY Times Tower. Is it just a really, really rough draft? How are these useful in presentations, etc?
I wish I could find other examples, but I’ve seen enough pictures that look like a bunch of colored lines or corks and toothpicks.
I can understand from an abstract art angle, but I don’t see how you could submit it to clients as a realistic design for their buildings.
Concept work. They’ll hash together a couple of options present them to the client and then get feedback and make changes. They’re not the finished product, which is what your first example is.
Physical architectural models, as opposed to computer rendered models, are expensive to make and so it would be silly to build polished models at the conceptual phase.
Some ideas are hard to relay to clients who have no experience reading 2 dimensional plans and elevations. A 3-D model, while still in the conceptual phase, can express the thinking process of the architect to the client much better than words and/or sketches. And it also can help the client express his thoughts on it also by pointing to physical areas on the model with his concerns.
Think of building a jungle gym for your kid and you want his feedback before you build. On a model they can tell you “I want to be able to climb up over here, crawl underneath there, have a slide over here, etc.” A lot harder for them to point it out on drawings.
In school, we used to call those “volumetric models”. They are meant to convey the general idea of the space a building will ocupy in its environment. They are useful when you are still at the earliest stages of design, and you want to get some feedback from the client as to what kind of distribution they would prefer for their space. One solid block, a tall spire, a slab with a hole in the middle? As most clients may have some difficulty getting a real idea of what you mean from just the words, these rough models put images in their heads.
