How the clay models on this site are made
Each of the four models on the case studies is described in one small text file and built in your browser. This is why, and how it works.
By Jonas Ravn. . 2 minute read.
In the studio I build models from card and plaster. They are slow and they are honest, because a wall that does not stand up on the table does not stand up on site. For the website we wanted something that behaved the same way, and was small enough to load on a phone.
Boxes, roofs and holes
Each model on this site is described by a short file. It lists boxes, with a position, a size and a rotation. It lists roofs, which are gable, mono-pitch or flat. It lists openings, which are cut out of a face and drawn as a darker rectangle. And it lists the site: a ground plane, some water, some cones for trees.
A small piece of code reads that file and builds the geometry. There are no model files to download. The file for the House on the Dune is under 10 kilobytes.
Clay, not photographs
The material is a single matte off-white, with a soft shadow where the building meets the ground and a faint grid. We chose that on purpose. A realistic render raises questions about colour, furniture and weather. A clay model only raises questions about the building.
The camera does the teaching
The model is pinned beside the text, and the camera moves between four poses as you scroll: the approach, the plan, the section with the roof lifted away, and the light inside. A list of views under the model lets you jump between them with a button or a keyboard. If you prefer less movement, or your device asks for it, the model shows still images instead.
What this is not
It is not a real model of the building. A real model comes from Rhino or Revit and is far too heavy for a web page. The clay model is a sketch that is accurate in its proportions, its heights and its openings, and that is what a first visit needs.
What we learned
The most useful thing we learned is that a small amount of geometry is enough. When we were building the first one, we kept adding detail. When we removed it again, the model became easier to read, and people looked at it for longer.