Make Models at Australian Design Centre with Smart Design Studio

The Australian Design Centre in Sydney Australia hosted a creative event where model making, wine and great Design was celebrated. The ticketed event, Cutting & Folding: Indigo Slam Modelling, curated by Smart Design Studio members Angus and Nicole Leunig, provided insightful perspectives on how their firm utilised physical models in their design development for the award winning Indigo Slam building. Celeste Raanoja of Make Models joined the event acting as a collaboration support crew for Smart Design Studio by creating a series of models the team could assemble over some refreshments and get some much needed making time into their day.

Here’s what Celeste had to say about the night:

What was the event?

The event was held at the Australian Design Centre alongside the  “CONCRETE: art design architecture” Exhibition. Smart Design Studio curated a workshop that involved a presentation about model making and how they used models to design their award winning Indo Slam building and then a couple of exercises. The making tasks were focussed on exploring how physical objects relate to form. 

Tell us a bit about the events and how you came to support the Smart Design team in this event?

Back in 2018 we crafted a physical model of Indigo Slam for Smart Design Studio which was being exhibited by the Jam Factory alongside some other beautiful concrete objects and Architectural models. This was a great opportunity to work with the Smart Design Studio team again in an educational lens. I’m always interested in learning more about how firms that we typically work with, use models when designing. 

Since we’re not always involved in making models that support this phase of the design process, I came along to the night to learn about how physical models helped them think, explore and lock in such an amazing design. It was a great opportunity to explore and develop the function of photography in capturing physical objects, to tell a story about design. 

The event involved a fabulous presentation by Nicole and Angus who captured how models helped them consider how light entered the building through beautiful folds in the facade/surfaces of the award winning design. 

They also touched on the significance of models to Architectura History to give the participants an insight into how we use model making 

What was the purpose of taking images of each of the models if they had the physical objects?

The static image tells a very different story to the physical object. We thought it would be interesting to explore the fluid change of light on each of the models, and capture what we found “interesting”. The participants had full authorship onto what was shot, so they controlled the lighting and would tell us when to take the shot. 

What do you think the student extracted from the evening?

We took some of our photography and lighting equipment along and tested different ways lighting reacted, empathised and revealed beautiful light filled moments in the physical object. I believe this was a really useful instrument for helping people think about light and form in a different way, to explore that in person, physically, rather than in a computer screen with renders.