Getting started with a good foundation

Originally, I had planned to model only my school's campus. I mentioned to my architecture studio professor my intentions to make this model, and she said that the city planner had mentioned to her that he was interested in the same thing, but of the downtown area.

So I walked over to City Hall, where the city planner works, and had a nice talk with him. This was, of course, many months ago in mid October, which is why I am telling this story so quickly. I asked him where he saw this project going and we discussed the boundries and scales. I was big on making the downtown area and campus because they're interesting to see. He really wanted to see the residential districts so that the people looking at the model might be able to find their house on it (which would be cool, I must admit). We compromised on the dimensions and scale previously discussed. I still can't believe how big and detailed this model is going to be.

I wanted to start my model on the right foot, meaning that the model's foundation would be an accurate depiction of the topography of Geneva. Upstairs in City Hall, I photocopied their topographical maps, and later at home I enlarged them and drew a grid on them.

My next step was to find a material to carve the foundation into. The topo map has lines representing every 10 feet, so the scale calls for a material 1/8" thick. The material had to be in a sheet, be easy to cut, and soft enough to "plant" trees and buildings into later. I looked at rolls of cork and thin pieces of styrophome, but I decided on foam core, despite how easy it is to damage it. Each sheet is 32"x40," so 4 of them will be the size of the finished model. I drew out a grid on all of them so that I could convert the topographical map accurately onto the foam core. Of course, it does me no good to have a picture of the topography. If you draw out the topographical map twice and cut out all of the even lines on one piece of foam core and all of the odd lines on the other, you can stack and glue them together to create what I expect will look like stairs on both the top and bottom of the model using relitively few materials.

I'm still in the process of drawing the topographical map onto the foam core, so I'll let you, know how it works out. Also, I just realized while trying to photograph 4 pieces of foam core to show you the size of the prospective model, that there is no spot in my room large enough to lay out all 4 pieces next to each other. Not even on the wall. As you can see in the picture, there is a fire sprinkler in the way. This means that if I live in this room over the summer and again next year, I'll never see the full model pieced together until it's done unless I find another place to work on it. Wish me luck. I'm going to need it!