Cardiff City model moves to County Hall.

After being centre of attention at the football Stadium event, our Cardiff City model is now on temporary display within the County Hall offices in Cardiff Bay. As you can see from the images it’s a much more low-key venue but we’re told it does get a regular stream of visitors, from politicians and potential inward investors right through to police officers from other cities who use the model to help with crowd control planning for visiting football supporters (sadly not from premiership teams this year!). It’s going to be in County Hall for a few more weeks before moving to its permanent venue in the new Library (opposite John Lewis) where it will be open to the general public. Since the stadium event we’ve added a few tweaks and improvements to the model itself and to the interactive element including a new “All lights on” button which lights up all 36 of the model’s lighting zones at the same time.

6.5m x 5.5m model of Cardiff at 1:750 scale

Here’s a first glimpse of the massive project we’ve been working on for the last 5 months, a 6.5 x 5.5 metre interactive model of Cardiff. We set it up for the first time yesterday at a major launch in the Cardiff City football stadium where it was the centre of attention for over 200 specially invited guests. The model has been designed for use in a permanent marketing suite to promote the city of Cardiff to national and international investors. It is a fully interactive model controlled via a large touchscreen which activates over 30 different lighting zones on the model and at the same time displays relevant information pages on the screen. The touchscreen images are also projected onto a large screen above the model so that the information is visible to all. More information to follow soon.

Detailed marketing model for national developer

We’ve made three of these housing development models already this year and we’ve got four more in the pipeline over the next couple of months. 1:200 is an ideal scale for these types of models because it allows us to show a good level of detail but keeps the model reasonably compact, which is important if it’s going into a cramped sales cabin on site. For larger developments with over 100 plots we sometimes have drop down to 1:250 scale, just to keep the model at a manageable size.

Model of Butlins redevelopment plan at 1:200 scale

This 2.3 metre long model was commissioned to showcase the new development proposals at Butlins holiday resort at Minehead, Somerset. The model shows the first phase of the development, a new chalet area, in full colour and detail whilst the phase 2 proposals for a new hotel are shown at a simplified, monochromatic level (the building is just visible as a white massing block in the main photo). The phase 2 area will be updated to a fully detailed level at a later date. An important requirement for the model was that it should illustrate the attractive landscaped setting for the new chalets and the client was very pleased with the final result.

House model with lift-off floors

Because of the complex layout of this luxury villa the developer felt he needed a realistically detailed marketing model to allow potential buyers to fully appreciate the intricacies and subtleties of the architecture, especially as it was situated on a steeply sloping site. As well as giving it a realistic external appearance we also had to build the model in removable layers so that the split level internal room layout could be demonstrated as well. You can see this in one of the images. Although there is no internal colour or detail we did includ some simplified furniture and fittings to give the rooms an instant identity and a clear sense of space.