From Doll’s House to Dream House

Abstract

During the 1930s, Australian architects began to construct miniature scale models employing an increasing variety of materials to simulate in detail the spatial, visual, and material characteristics of proposed buildings. This replacement of a long dominant use of plain and simple models occurred during the years immediately surrounding the Second World War and coincided with a post-war housing boom. Many of Australian’s earliest encounters with such ultra-realistic models of architecture in miniature occurred through children’s doll houses and building sets that were intended to cultivate ideas about order and taste but also a spatial awareness, and creativity. Using models and home advertisements from years surrounding the Second World War, this paper seeks to explore the affective transition of scale architectural models in design practices from a description of form and mass to an object of consumption.