Design Post | The Mock-Up
It's your friend
First, there are drawings. They begin as ideas loosely sketched on paper, thoughts wandering out from the pencil’s point, meandering over the page. Messy. Incomplete. Concepts giving first breath to what if. There’s much of this. Many iterations to try, to sift through, then discard, then add, then change, until the body of the idea begins to emerge. Then scaled drawings follow. They true the sketches. They add the math. They sharpen the lines. They bring the technical language. They’re also revised several times.
But even then, there are some details that remain fuzzy. And that’s when you get to build a mock-up! A full-scale construction of that light fixture, that shelf, that bracket, that profile, that table leg, that trim sequence. With this first lift of a sketched idea into the third dimension, it suddenly becomes real. Using paper, tape, glue, string, sticks, cardboard, scraps of board or drywall, and sometimes even fabric, you measure, cut and build a model. Then you can install it, see it, feel it in the context of the space.
Now it all makes sense. Now you make your final adjustments. One inch difference is revelatory; even an eight of an inch can make all the difference.
Recently in Pond House Studio, I faux-installed the sconce that will hang above the kitchenette counter (faux install = no wiring was connected), then, using a scrap of drywall, I mocked-up the glass shelf that’ll hang below. The placement of the shelf had already been determined at drafting stage, but the depth of the shelf was still in flux. Here, in real time, in scale, in three dimensions, I could see how the shelf depth related to the light fixture and to the surrounding cabinetry that was coming into being. What shelf depth is best? Now I know.
And then? While standing in the mock-up another unrelated idea landed for the space in a tiny, glittery explosion. Love it when that happens.
Loves? As I say to my clients, a mock-up is your friend.
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