Miniature Worlds, Monumental Vision: Why Architectural Scale Models Still Matter

31 October 2025

A 3D model of the 30 St Mary Axe building, known to most Londoners as the Gherkin. Photograph: Alicia Taylor

In the cavernous exhibition space of Foster + Partners’ Sydney studios the hum of conversation softens as visitors gather around a meticulously detailed scale model of 30 St Mary Axe the London skyscraper known colloquially as the Gherkin, its spiralling form captured at one-hundredth its real size. But this isn’t merely a model of a building: it is a testament to how these miniature worlds remain critical to architectural practice, and compelling enough to fill entire exhibition halls. The show, titled Tiny Beautiful Things, opens amid the city’s annual Sydney Open and brings together decades of model-making, from handcrafted timber versions to 3D-printed prototypes, under one roof.

At first glance the relevance of models might seem quaint after all, digital 3-D renderings and virtual reality have revolutionised how architects present ideas. Yet, as communication lead Katy Harris at Foster + Partners explains, the physical model remains indispensable. “Architects have to think in 3-D… that’s why physically making models is incredibly important to understand whether you have designed correctly,” she says. For many clients, she adds, a scrollable screen simply does not convey how a building will look and feel. “Give them a model, they get it.”

The exhibition tracks this shift in technique and meaning. On display are models of structural icons and social-infrastructure projects: a timber and metal model of the 1980s Hong Kong and Shanghai Bank, a tiny representation of the proposed new Old Trafford football stadium complete with 50,000 miniature spectators, and that iconic model of 30 St Mary Axe which reveals ventilation features unseen from street level. Even as building technologies advance, the model proves itself a bridge between concept, client and city.

What is perhaps striking is the way these models live beyond the design studio. They are simultaneously tools for analysis, marketing props, and artefacts of creative labour. For example, one model of Trafalgar Square illustrates how a seemingly simple urban intervention transforming a traffic roundabout into a stepped pedestrian plaza can be validated through thorough physical modelling. In an era of glitzy renderings, the tactile experience of moving around a model, peering into its lobby, reading its signage, retains a unique capacity to ground fantasy into measurable space.

Visitors to the Sydney exhibition praise the scale models for the magical way they condense entire cityscapes into tabletops. There is something of childhood wonder in seeing a skyscraper or transit hub shrunk down, yet the educational potency is real. Harris credits this to more than nostalgia: “The art of model-making is more than just a professional tool; it is a universal language.”

Technology continues to transform the craft, but does not replace it. While 3-D printing now helps produce intricate structural components, museum-quality displays still rely on skilled model-makers Foster + Partners reportedly employs around 60 of them. The models thus reflect a blend of precision engineering and artisanal craft, reminding us that even high-tech architecture rests on human hands.

The exhibition challenges us to look at architecture in miniature and to think about scale not only the scale of a building but the scale of planning, foresight and consequence. A tower may rise hundreds of metres, but the path begins with a model on a table, where the shape, light, texture and surround are interrogated. It also invites reflection on the ritual of models in architecture: how they are negotiated, presented, discarded or refined, and how they articulate leaps of imagination that span from drawing to construction.

For architects and the public alike the value is dual. For professionals, the model remains a checkpoint in the design process, a place to test, correct and validate institutional logic. For viewers, the model offers an accessible version of the city they can walk around a skyline in miniature, rotate a perspective, and then return to the real one and look up. It offers understanding and empathy for urban form.

In the age of accelerated digital design and mass-construction, Tiny Beautiful Things argues that these small-scale artefacts matter more than ever. They are not nostalgic curiosities but active participants in architectural discourse. They help expose both the ambition of our buildings and the fragile human scale that underlies them.