I’ve always had a deep affinity for cars. I grew up watching my father design and fabricate complicated metal pieces, creating working prototypes of his machine and automobile inventions. At the age of 13, I joined the General Motors Fisher Body Craftsman’s Guild where from 1958-1962 I designed and built six plaster cast models. 

This experience was the introduction to my career in model making which formally began in 1967 when I was an architecture student at Cooper Union in New York City. My thesis model impressed architect and dean of the school, John Hedjuk, so much that he commissioned me to make two of his models for an exhibition.

I went on to make commercial models for other architects including Charles Gwathmey. My first model commission from the Museum of Modern Art, Le Corbusier’s Villa Stein, was in 1969. It was built at 3/8” scale, which was the standard that I established for all of the models I was to build for MoMA. Six more commissions were to follow including my most well known model, Frank Lloyd Wright’s Fallingwater. I documented just about every step of building this model and wrote a book about entitled “Fallingwater The Model” which Rizzoli published in 2001.

Below are a few examples of these architectural models. Click on the images to see photos and notes for each project.