MODELS, ARCHITECTURAL. Besides the usual delineations upon paper showing the plans and different parts of a building, and their details in elevations, sections, and working drawings [DESIGN; ARCHITECTURE], a solid representation or miniature facsimile of the proposed edifice is sometimes formed, iu order to give a more distinct idea of it than can be obtained from a number of separate drawings by those who are unable to comprehend them perfectly, and combine them mentally, so as to figure to themselves a complete and distinct image of the whole. Models of this kind are variously executed, and more or less finished up, as may be required. Sometimes they are of wood, either coloured or not ; and if economy is studied, the capitals of the columns, the cornices, and all other decorative parts, are merely blocked out in the rough, the mouldings and ornaments being omitted. But the material now more generally used is plaster of Paris, because columns and other parts that require much carving may be cast in moulds, and afterwards finished up with comparatively very little trouble or expense. Another material employed for making architectural models is card-board, applied in surfaces of various thicknesses ; and although it seems fitted only for very plain buildings, it is capable of being wrought so as to express even the minute and elaborate tracery' and other ornaments in Gothic architecture : models thus formed are leas beautiful than those of plaster, but they are leas susceptible of injury, and may be more easily coloured to represent the different materials—stone, brick, wood-work, slate, &c, They are ho wever more expensive, being attended with much greater labour, and requiring to be built up, as it were, like the edifice itself.
Models are by no means so generally made use of as they ought to be, on account of their expensiveness ; but when a building of great magnitude is to be erected, the cost of a model, although it may be considerable in itself, becomes a mere trifle in the sum-total. Where merely the facade of a building will be exposed to view, a model may be dispensed with, as a simple elevation will answer the purpose quite as well. But for one that is insulated, or is at all complex, a model becomes desirable : the same again if a facade is composed of many parts or surfaces, some projecting, others retiring, the effect of which cannot else always be so distinctly foresben as it ought to be, except perspective drawings be made of it from several different distances and points of view. For showing the internal parts of a building, models are of comparatively little use.
Portrait models of celebrated edifices are frequently introduced in libraries and galleries, either as restorations of the original structures, or as showing them as dilapidated by time. For those of the last mentioned kind, cork is the material usually made use of, it being well calculated to express of itself the ruggedness and flaws of decayed stone buildings.