The Working Model: A cross-disciplinary collaborative tool

In the broad field of design, and in the context of physical representation, the working model is essential. Working with or through a physical model is still common practice as it is a highly effective and engaging way of developing conceptual ideas and achieving design objectives. Better collaboration is needed to produce good building design that can only be achieved through open dialogue, yet the working model remains an exclusive experiment within each discipline. The working model is a powerful decision-making tool to progress design and it is used in different ways to inform specific aspects of the design, depending on the user’s discipline and inquiries. Architectural scale models offer architects an understandable way to develop their concepts through scale-modelling, used to aid or even guide the design process to achieve a desired goal. On the other hand, an engineer’s mock-up is also a working model used to understand structural behavior by load-testing, for example. Both of these are working models in different forms, according to design intensions and specification. Thus, as a decision-making tool, it can offer an opportunity to designers to collaborate sooner. When the working model aim to respond to a broader set of questions, different disciplines can engage earlier and thus better inform the decisions. To inform a better understanding of the working model as a term and its power in design development, this paper defines the working model’s purpose within each design discipline (architecture, structural, light design, etc.) providing an understanding of how it is used as a decision-making tool. This paper will identify the multi-purpose form of the working model, with the objective of interlinking disciplines to offer architects an insight to build models which study aspects through a cross-disciplinary perspective. This may lead to working models becoming more interdisciplinary, offering opportunity for a stronger, more informed design process, collaboration and thus better building design.