The DK&P studio recently integrated 3D printing into our practice. In this Q&A with our communications intern Hannah Kosoff, an architecture student from UM named Roland Stafford shares his experience in crafting a giant study model of the neighborhood surrounding our office. Roland talks about what he’s learning as an intern with our team and sheds light on the 3D printer’s implications when applied at the urban scale.
The South Miami model was an opportunity to combine, into one artifact, thirty years of projects, plans and urban design ideas for downtown. Dover, Kohl & Partners first worked on this neighborhood in 1992, leading the effort that resulted in the Hometown Plan and an innovative form-based code, one of the first of its kind. That plan led to the narrowing of the roadways on Dorn Avenue and Sunset Drive, to reclaim space for walking and dining; these were the first such “road diets” in Florida.
The experimental model has separately movable, magnetic 3D buildings that can be rearranged on the metal “blueprint” base. Like a three-dimensional version of the figure-ground or “Nolli” maps customarily employed by urban designers, the model offers a quick way to understand the shape of public spaces and the private buildings that give form to those spaces.