Fuldskalamodellen: Arkitekturens sande billede mellem realitet og forestilling

The paper examines the full-scale architectural model and the question of the truthful image. This question, concerning the representation and its reliability, is continuously present in architecture: to what extent does the architectural image – and we may regard the architectural model as such – provide us with a truthful image of a future project? Architects rely on various types of representations in order to provide an image of a reality yet to come: the realised building. Reality and the image of the possible are fully entangled in the architectural model, in particular in the full-scale model where differences of scale are eliminated. Through a discussion of the virtual and actual aspects of the full-scale model, the paper concludes that the model provides insight into future realities and as such can be regarded as a truthful image, but that it furthermore – due to the ambiguous proximity of the virtual and actual – also exposes the question of truth as such as contingent on a relation between reality and fiction. The paper is based on analysis of selected empirical cases including a mock-up of Sverre Fehn’s project for an extension of the Royal Danish Theatre (1996), Robbrecht en Daem architecten’s Mies 1:1. Das Golfklub Projekt (2013), the full-scale model of Ludwig Mies van der Rohe’s proposal for the Kröller-Müller villa (1912), Bungalow Germania – the German pavilion at the Venice Architecture Biennale (2014) and the simulation of the Berlin Castle (1993-94).