During one of my courses in university we were asked to build a model house by a famous architect. Mies Van Der Rohe was one of about 10 on the list we were given. Two works of art that he is probably most well known for is the Barcelona Pavillion and the Barcelona chair which is pictured below.  Our group choose to reproduce Mies Van Der Rohe’s Tugendhat House as it didn’t have as many odd angles as the other structures, this one was all 90 degree angles. What was a bit challenging was the fact the house was built into the side of a slanted hill, so the “front” of the house was at the street level on the upper side of this two story house. The backyard was on the bottom of the site and surrounding the house on either side was a sloping hill. Trying to convey this in the model was another challenge but one we were up for.

Though it was easier to construct, trying to find blue prints, schematics, and photos of the house was much more difficult most likely due in part to the house’s age. We couldn’t find one source where the house’s schematics were all using a consistent unit of measure, some didn’t even have units, just a drawing! So here we were with a number of diagrams from different sources, all at different scales. It took us more than a few hours to measure up every side of the house on all the diagrams and figure out a common # we would use so that the final model would be to the correct scale.

We used millboard to construct the house and thick cardboard to build its base. I would highly recommend an Olfa utility knife to score and cut the millboard, anything of lesser quality and you won’t be getting good results. Be sure to break off the blade once it starts getting dull. The entire model was held together by some strong white bonding glue. We went through an entire bottle on the model and had to hit the hardware store when it opened the next morning (it was due at noon the next day). I should note that the model was built in 2-3 days, 50 hours of work and no sleep for me and another member on the last night. There was three of us working on the actual construction of the model, cutting all the panels we needed and putting it together. The final product was well worth it though. This was more satisfying than building one of those model airplanes you buy off the shelf.

We wanted the ability to remove the roof and first floor of the house to reveal what was on the other levels. One of my other team mates suggested we use the chimney as the anchoring point for the removable levels, the instructor was quite impressed. If the roof and 1st level wasn’t anchored, these two pieces would freely move around and look amateurish, we didn’t want that.

The below set of photos are my most viewed one by visitors. A lot of architectural students go through them and I often get emails asking where I found the blueprints or if I still have them. They were all scribbled down on random pieces of paper at the time so unfortunately I don’t have them. I always ask the students to send me their pics of their final model to see how it compares. I’m quite happy with how ours turned out .

Barceonla Chair at Knoll furniture store in Seattle, Washington.

The back of the Tugendhat house.

The middle level of the Tugendhat house.

The top floor of the Tugendhat house.

Side of the house with the slanted earth.

For those of you who are interested in the lightening setup, see below. We grabbed a piece of black cloth and setup a flash.