Die Möglichkeit eines Modells (The possibility of a model)

INSTALLATION, 2009

Inkjet Prints, A4

In 2009, i faced the task of constructing a model of a vast architecural structure – the “Ordensburg Vogelsang” in North-Rhine Westfalen, Germany. Vogelsang was planned, built and used as an Nazi elite school in the “Third Reich”, and has only recently been opened to the public and is now part of a national park.

Installation view
Installation view

Both the extend of the complex of buildings and the implications of its history required me to use an algorythmic approach to modelling Vogelsang – dissecting and digitally processing the architecture, leaving a piece that offers the possibility to reassembly.

capturing, projecting, re-modeling, dissecting & exhibiting architecture

Starting from photographs, i stitched together an panaoramic image. The image then was projected on a 3D geometry (a result of me painting vertex points onto the panorama) and later turned into a cutout model, printed out but not cut or assembled (the process is detailed in the PDF).

Process - 3D Modelling
Process – 3D Modelling

I like to think of the prints as paper containing a code, an architectural DNA of buildings. Through the numbering, every part contains its own assembly instructions, its location in space, its relationship to the other parts.

My model is not an impossible model, since it could theoretically be constructed – the parts may be small, but all the instructions are on the paper. However, the assembled “possible model” is a manifestation of my perspective from an unique, unreproducible viewport, it is a valid model, if only for me.

PDF-Download:  The possibility of a model – process

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