Dunn, N., 2007.

The Ecology of the Architectural Model

Models are a designer’s currency. They are so common in the exchange and development of ideas as to feature without attention and are used often without question. Architectural practice and its history are paralleled by a history of models, as varied in form as the buildings and ideas that they represent. For architectural educators models are not only as near to a realised building as one can get but for their students they are the means by which architecture itself, its processes, concepts, strategies and tactics are learned. Understanding the role played by an educational tool is important and a tool implies both a user and an environment in which to use it. Little has been said about the role the environment plays in the functioning of models in the learning process. This book describes the environment of architectural models in an educational context, adopting an ecological approach.

A significant issue early on in my research was the problem of illustrating different relationships between ecological events such as whether they occurred concurrently and/or were nested etc. Once I had developed a suitable format to formally describe such data I found it could be readily adapted to illustrate the other types of data generated. The development of these formal representations to describe complex relationships and information difficult to explain and analyse through text alone was a significant part of methodology during my research since it enabled me to enter subsequent observation sessions and record events and behaviour occurring within different environments in a much more effective and coherent manner. Furthermore, the diagrams developed by my research offer a dual purpose since they provide a flexible descriptive and analytical tool that may be applied in future ecological research and also present the reader with a readily digestible format of information.

Related Research:   Nick Dunn  

Dunn diagram illustrating nesting of affordances of the explorative model

The Ecology of the Architectural Model