Criss Mills's Historical Summary: Designing With Models In History

Modeling has an evolving history since ancient times. In his book titled “Designing with Models”, Mills (2005) went over a brief introduction about “model history”. He tried to highlight the importance of models in general, through the historical narrative summary by addressing the role of models in ancient civilizations to the present day. Accordingly, models were made primarily as symbols during Egyptian and Greco-Roman times, whereas builders during the Middles Ages “with the advent of cathedrals” were carrying and presenting their individual expertise through the making of mock-up models, such as arches for buildings. Additionally, models during the Renaissance were used as “a means to attract the support of patrons”, as mentioned by Mills
Criss Mills pointed out that during the period of modernity, i.e. the 1950s; the ‘role of modeling in architecture began to decline due to the embodiment of platonic solids (cube, cylinder, etc.) as a reductive and unsophisticated design approach’. Until the late 1970s when the modernism thought was weakened, the ‘model regained its position again as a powerful tool’ for design exploration (Figure 2.3) (Mills, C,
Here, he tried to focus on this phenomenon because of its active role in the lives of human beings in general. It should be mentioned that many researchers might ignore this role, while it is considered the core of the exploration, discovery, and communication processes in design creativity. Smith takes up the idea of a "stick" and its appearance in ancient human life, where it was the tool that could be used in all kinds of activities, such as: walking, hunting, and exploring, and also as a "scaling" tool (Figure 2.6). For instance, when this tool was stuck into the ground to know the time, and then later was dedicated for building his shelter for protection. Thus, it can be seen that despite the simplicity of the idea behind the “stick”, it should be regarded as a very important point, as Smith