Model-It! Week 3 Class Exercise

Fisher House 1:50 Interior Detail

For this four hour tutorial we had to complete, in 1:50, the famous window seat in the Fisher House. This corner of the house featured a fireplace, a seat integrated into the window, and a display of the creativity Kahn used when designing the windows for Fisher House.

Out of respect for his attention to the beauty of wood, I tried my best to follow the same wood grains, and create each beam on its own, rather than taking a piece of balsa and cutting out the shapes of the wood. This way, the structure was also more stable, as the direction of the woodgrains didn't allow for two windows to be cut out so close to each other.

Parts of the wall made separately

Putting together each element

The most challenging part in this task was constructing the elaborate box window and window sill in the corner, missing in the picture below. It proved difficult because on one side, the window had an indent, however on the other side of that indent there was a 'box' window through which you could look if sitting down. 

Almost finished walls, without the corner box window

Exterior of the window seat. Note the box window on
the left shares a side with the inset part left of the main window.

In order to capture the detail the architect went to to define his windows, I went to the effort of detailing the depth of a window sill and noted that at the corner the two walls joined into a corner beam. The last point also helped me have a clean corner, without any messy joints with one wall overlapping the other, or having to cut both walls at an angle.

Out of appreciation for the real beauty of the building,
I noted details such as the window sills and corner column

The curved chimney/fireplace was a little difficult to make cleanly, as can be seen at the base of the chimney. Also challenging was the trapezium-shaped interior of the fireplace that also needed to be made carefully to join all the pieces cleanly.
Although I was trying to capture details in the woodwork, I decided not to go to the lengths of scoring the wooden slats of the floor as I felt this would distract from the entirety of the model, through their strong directionality.
The final product, when placed under light imitating the natural direction, captures the open nature present throughout the whole house due to the excellent window designs.

Overview of the entire model

Perspective shot