Well as some people know on here if you’ve seen any of my previous posts, I am an architecture student at Baker College in Flint, MI. For my Site Planning and Development class which i have monday nights, our site that we have to work with is the former Chevorlet Mfg. site in Flint. MI.
A google maps view is here. Our property that we have is the area surronded by Cheverolet ave., Bluff st., Stevens St and Glennwood Ave.
Our two options that we have to choose from are a minor league baseball stadium with 5,000 seat compacity. with this option we also have to include corprate offfices at 12,000sqft; 4 resturants at 10,000sqft each; fitness center 12,000 sqft ; hotel for 20 rooms @ 18,000 sqft, and 2 little league stadiums @ 300 seat capcity each,
The other option is a r&d park, which has total 9 buildings. I 'm not going to go into details on this option as i am leaning towards the baseball stadium.
If I was an architecture professor and you used kit buildings I would take points off. I would expect you to design buildings to fit the space. Just a thought.
I doubt there are model 5000 seat baseball stadium kits. The kits for the other buildings would not be very modern, unless you were trying to go retro and make the site look before it was condemned.
Plus the smallest scale you will find a wide variety of buildings is N scale which will be HUGE for that size site. You are better served spending your time scratchbuilding something original to a much smaller scale to fit the space.
Your choice. This is a college project, I would go with something more professional rather than something hobby oriented.
If this project is supposed to get you top marks I suggest you check your spelling, otherwise this may not be the oppertunity opportunity you hope it will be. You might also have affronted a lot of Chevy fans with your spelling of Chevrolet. Sorry, as one who was castigated for misspelling I could not resist.[swg]
I second the previous suggestions that very little in the model train hobby will come close to 1/350 scale. You will find trees and figures on eBay but not much in the way of trains. Even Z scale stuff will not fit. I also agree that you work from scratch (said as a former architectural student who placed first in his modeling class).
I would add one more piece of advise if I may. As modelers we usually try to include as much detail into a scene as we can. We do that (I think) because we want our fellow modelers to appreciate our modeling skills. An architectural model is intended to do exactly the opposite. It is supposed to impress at first sight. The overall impression is what is important. If you put in too many details you will detract from the first impression. Less is more!
Just a suggestion.[:D]
Congratulations on your choice of professions and and your choice of hobbies (I am assuming that you are a model railroader). Be wise about how you mix the two.
Check out the Plastruct site for parts useful in scratchbuilding and for small scale detail parts. The hobby market is a sideline for them. The main focus of their business is modeling supplies for Architects, Engineers and professional model builders.
While a baseball park with money making adjacent structures sounds fun, a research and development “park” even in a very small scale would offer you the opportunity to practice making model roads, parking, municipal service (i.e., fire hydrants, trash and recycling pickup etc) areas, basic or ornamental landscaping and other such things that would be useful skills for a model railroader to learn – or maybe reverse the thought, would call for the skills and information that a model railroader is more likely to have than other students.
The structures themselves could also be good practice.
David Barrow’s HO scale industrial switching layout uses very clean and neat but essentially featureless white foam core structures for the warehouse buildings that are rail served. He himself is an architect and his layout looks like an architectural display.
I like the ‘water feature’ going through the middle.
As a former architecture student, I never built any models with detail to the level we are accustomed to in model railroading.
Foam core and artist-quality construction paper were the most common materials, with bits of balsa, wire and clear acetate as necessary for detail.
Usually, the professor would specify a scale to build any models to, but basically, it has to be big enough to clearly show the whole project.
Ahhh, I well remember staying up all night planting bits of sedum for trees and searching the studio classroom for anything to weight down layers of terrain!