Architecture Here and There

The photograph at left comes from a lengthy essay, available online with fascinating photographs, about the planning, design and construction of the Department of Agriculture building on Independence Avenue, next to the Mall in Washington, D.C. I have not read the essay, but was looking for a citation of a work by Richard Guy Wilson, whose lecture at Friday's symposium on the American Renaissance I heard, which will be the subject of my next column.

As something of a connoisseur of architectural mockups - life-sized sectional models erected at the site of a planned new building to dislay its style and materials - the photo was intensely interesting. It shows a plaster mockup of the Agriculture Building (1914). You never get such detail in a mockup today. Today, a mockup is designed as much to disguise what the building is to look like as to reveal (as permitting requires) the materials being used.

A good example of a mockup designed to hide as much as to reveal was the mockup of the GTECH building in Providence, from which one could hardly get much sense of what the building was going to be like. I will post a photo of that if I can find one.

 Tags  American Renaissance Architecture Mall Mockup Richard Guy Wilson Washington DC

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