Models and maquettes - miniature representations of what your wall is going to look like can be an important tool for telling if a thing is going to work or not.
This model of an idea I had for a 7 foot high dry stone replica of the Toronto City Hall, which we completed during the 5 days of Canada Blooms, back in 2006, seemed appropriate for the theme that year, which was was 'Our Town'.
The tall outside curved walls were not a problem. However I knew from modeling the spherical 'spaceship' that the center structure was going to much more difficult. It was !
I didn't use as much plasticine as it looks like, either. I cut Styrofoam curves from 2 inch blue insulation and glued them on top of each other creating the tall 'C' shapes, and then covered them with duct tape so that when I pressed the pieces 'stone' to the surface, they had something to stick to. The centre piece uses a wooden ball for filler.
Toronto City Hall
The completed free-standing 'demonstration/installation' city hall we built that year was constructed totally dry laid. Thirty tons of random shaped quarried stone went into it, with no Styrofoam or wood filler. We took it all down and re-palleted it on the last night, the show.
I'll never forget the 'sense of place' and the sensation of 'inner space' created by those two outside walls.
Three stories below ground, in the bowels of the Toronto Convention Centre, surrounded by modern manufactured high-tech landscape displays, our natural enclosure became a kind of sanctuary where you could almost hear the stones whispering.
I'm sorry I have so few photos of it. But I still have the model.
