Tool – Object – Fragment: The Afterlife of Physical Measurement Models

Measurement models are a special type of model used in the field of civil engineering and architecture to analyze, understand, dimension, and test load-bearing structures. Like architectural models, they served as a communication medium and planning tool but were often damaged or destroyed in the measuring process. Consequently, only a few models have survived or found their way into collections. After the models had been elaborately produced in highly specialized workshops and tested by specially trained engineers, they fulfilled their purpose as tools and were dumped or kept as objects of a purely commemorative nature for as long as space permitted. The experimental equipment and testing facilities continued to be used for other tests so that the kept objects can be seen as mere fragments of their actual function. Since the potential of these fragments was not recognized until it was far too late, some of these objects have taken interesting paths in their preservation history, such as the measurement models for the Olympic roofs in Munich by Frei Otto or a test shell for the design of a concrete shell by the German shell builder Ulrich Müther. The preserved objects are repositories of knowledge about the design process. In the research project “Last Witnesses”, founded by the German Research Foundation in the Priority Program “Construction as Cultural Heritage”, the fragments are examined from the perspective of construction history and were digitally rebuilt for further research on the use and purposes of these objects in architecture and engineering.