Digital Post-processing on Scale Models - A Tool in Design Education

Abstract

Design education can benefit from using a more integrated approach between digital techniques and traditional model-making. This approach expands perception and can add layers of imaginative thinking, advancing the design process.

Model making is an important tool in design as a way of developing and transmitting ideas in a three-dimensional manner. Also photography has been used in the past to understand and perceive design models. However, in recent years, due to both photography and digital post-processing of images being made accessible on a larger scale, it is becoming used as a fast rendering technique by some professionals and students. But it isn’t yet being used in design education. The process has three stages, without being linear: model-making, photography on the model and post-processing. They often influence each other, as new information and creative input in one stage can determine changes in another. So the model will affect the photograph and the post-processed image and also the post-processed image can induce changes in the model and, therefore, in the form of the object. This paper is based on theoretical research, observations of current practice and three workshops done at the Architecture School in Bucharest in February-March 2018. It expands the ways in which we can use accessible technology in design and design education.