Designing in Real Scale: The Practice and Afterlife of Full-Size Architectural Models from Renaissance to Fascist Italy

Abstract

Full-size models are powerful and expansive tools required in critical constructive situations and contexts. Part of both sculptural and architectural creative processes, they have been privileged by Renaissance artists such as Michelangelo and Bernini, who were architects and sculptors at the same time. Several documented cases of their real-size models reproducing portions of buildings on-site and modified ad libitum (at one’s pleasure) are discussed here. Promoted in major Roman projects, full-size models served many purposes, from testing innovative solutions to public events and political propaganda. In more recent times, they continued to be central to urban, architectural, and artistic works, implicitly intertwined with the production of exhibitions and movies, which were promoted by the fascist party between the 1920s and 1940s in Italy, encouraging and enhancing the media potential of architecture.