We’re obsessed with tchotchkes, but specifically: cast metal souvenir buildings. Over the past near-century, they’ve become ubiquitous worldwide, and you can find them in nearly any airport in any country. Their fidelity or accuracy isn’t whats important, as much as the memory of a building is. Additionally, souvenirs, and scaled buildings in general, have become contemporary subject matter in contemporary art.

Contemporary artists, including Gregor Schneider, Morgan Fisher, Do Ho Suh, Rachel Whiteread, Paul McCarthy and many more have explored medium to large scale versions of placing architecture within a separate piece of architecture. Similarly, at museums and institutions worldwide, you can find model versions inside of the building you’re standing in.

It’s emotional to enter a transformative piece of architecture, surreal to see its scaled model in front of you, and hilarious to hold it in the palm of your hand—but what if you could experience them all at the same time? Following the line of miniature to real thing and changing your relationship to the architecture with each step. There’s something about that change of scale that interests us, and we want to experience it. We chose four buildings as an example—ones that culturally or architecturally mean something to the studio. That said, we believe this series can happen to nearly any building, and it's our intention to collaborate with an institution to bring a version to life.

We propose to build a series of site-specific sculptural artworks that honor a specific building through several scaled multiples, the smallest of which fits in your hand, and is available for purchase as a literal souvenir. All elements of these sculptures will be produced with the same cast pot metal texture found in souvenir buildings. Some you’ll be able to get in, some you’ll peer into, and some you’ll simply tower over, but everyone gets to leave with the building.

Neue Nationalgalerie

Bourse de Commerce

Seagram Building

Serpentine Gallery