Amanda Levete Architects

Amanda Levete Architects is a London-based office formed in 2009. The company is working on a project based in Bangkok for a 1.5 million sq ft hotel and retail development for Central Retail Corporation.

They asked Ogle to produce a large, full-colour model of the building with its surrounding area in white.

One of the main challenges lay in converting data and drawings into information that was practical for our purposes. First, current satellite photos were studied to get an accurate impression of the dense urban environment in which the project was located.

Although much of the model, with the exception of the development itself, was to be in white, we used different achromic surfaces to help delineate roads and buildings. All miniature trees, plants, street furniture and pedestrians were sprayed white too.

As this project was to be completed on a tight budget, we had to use our time as efficiently as possible and be very creative with our manufacturing techniques. Once the CAD data was converted, we took the swift and simple route of profiling the buildings’ sections from white Perspex before assembling them along with the roads and driveways.

The base, surrounding landscape and buildings were all laser-cut acrylic. The feature building was constructed from sections of transparent SLA and finished mostly in a silver-blue flip paint, while the main window areas were left transparent. All the detail work was made of separate parts and fixed using the great skills of our traditional model making team.

The finished model was a huge success and now stands in the foyer of the Amanda Levete Architects offices.