Modelling for the Camera: Photography of Architectural Models in Spain 1925-1970

Modelling for the Camera pays tribute to two important systems of architectural representation: the model and the photograph. Rescuing over 100 original photographs of outstanding models--some eventually realized, and some that would remain unbuilt--from 20th-century Spain, this volume offers a modern, visual, critical and historiographical discourse on Spanish architecture from this rich period after the First World War.

Beyond the analysis of the models’ technical and compositional structure, the book includes sample pictures by photographers such as Francesc Català-Roca, Joaquín del Palacio (Kindel), Juan Pando, Martin Lladó, Oriol Maspons Ubiña Gomez and Ramón Massats, and architects such as José Manuel Aizpurúa, Alejandro de la Sota and Fernando Higueras. An amazing compendium of both modernist photography and architecture, this substantial hardcover is one of the first of its kind.

If the scale model is the architect’s lucid dream of structure, form, and dimension, then a model’s photograph freezes and flattens the materialized vision...This stylish exhibition catalogue explores the projective relationship between maquette and image with the consolidation of modernist architecture in Spain as a fertile historical backdrop. (Metropolis Magazine)