Mary Duggan / Architect
As I near the final term of the Final Major Project unit, the design communication is in huge focus as I decide the best way to display and inform my project to both internal tutors and external professionals. As much as the orthographic and digital visualisation will be both informative and visually communicative, the three-dimensional physical modelling will enhance the two-dimensional drawings, showing a level of depth that the drawings may not be able to communicate alone. Deciding the type of model, whether it is a full spatial model or a technical detail model, is difficult to judge as the development is on a large scale with many spatial complexities. Though I would like to model the whole building as it is the main protagonist in my concept, I worry that it is too complex to create a final quality piece of such a scale showing each element of the proposal. The model will need to show a level of spatial quality and I may do this by showing a crucial detail of the scheme, with technical and material accuracy.
Mary Duggan Architects, London, have a very impressive portfolio of models. Duggan’s style is very experimental and she uses an extensive use of mixed media, as opposed to limiting to one or two materials, but still manages to communicate in a very sophisticated way. Duggan, also co-founding director of Duggan Morris Architects, made a recent move to take her work forward with her own practice to capitalise on her specific areas of interest. Both practices utilise model making as a communication tool on both large and small-scale projects, whilst Mary Duggan Architects appear to have a more interdisciplinary style by collaborating with makers such as ceramicists, authors, poets and illustrators to record the practices equivocal processes. Both Duggan Morris and Mary Duggan Architects use casting, whether it is of colour pigmented plaster, resin or concrete which creates an outcome with depth and personality in full-schematic models and details such as facades and wall finishes. This is a technique that will work well for my scheme in representing the original three metre deep Martello Tower granite walls. By taking inspiration from both practices model making portfolios, Duggan Morris Architects spatial models and Mary Duggan’s experimental studies, and attempting to use a hybrid style of the features I admire in each of their works I will create a model that is sophisticated and demonstrative of my final concept.