Architecture students from the Melbourne School Design have reimagined scenes and buildings from Harry Potter through designing and fabricating animated set models.

At a summer intensive course called Smoke and Mirrors, teams were tasked with designing and fabricating an animated set model based on sourced materials. Using techniques and discussions learnt over the course of 12 days, they explored the use of model making and designing through the lens of a camera. Highly detailed models were creating using a mixture of intricately laser-cut pieces, hand modelling, and lights and motors.

Students were given briefing documents for eight scenes from Harry Potter with client information, quotes from the books, and some reference imagery. The idea was to replicate the sensation of being approached by a client with a Pinterest board of ideas and needing to turn them into a design.

The ‘clients’ were characters from the Harry Potter series, with information sourced from the books, movies and Pottermore to build client profiles. Students studied these characters and designed the spaces to reflect how the characters would have used the space.

Students had one 11 days to design, build and fabricate their models. Over 400 hours of laser cutting was undertaken to fabricate the models, and in one example, 700 boxes were hand-cut to fill Ollivander’s Wand Shop.

Models include Gringotts, The Shrieking Shack, The Burrow, Flourish and Blotts, Grimmauld Place, The Chamber of Secrets and The Great Staircase.

This studio was led by architect Jannette Le, and tutors Michael Mack, Mond Qu and Denis Vlieghe.

The works will be exhibited at the Melbourne School of Design until 24 March, 2019.

Photography by Janette Le

Architecture & Design Team

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