Introduction

In the introduction the author introduces the topic of full-scale mock-ups through the examples of two historical projects, Frank Lloyd Wright’s 1936 full-scale column mock-up for the S.C. Johnson Wax Administration Building in Racine, Wisconsin, and Mies van der Rohe’s 1912 full-scale mock-up for the Kröller-Müller Villa, in the Netherlands. The author examines the unique differences between the two mock-ups, as a way of understanding a better definition for mock-ups, with two seemingly different objectives evident in the examples. Beyond these two important works, the author attempts to expand and articulate a definition by comparing a mock-up to the received definitions of drawings and buildings, arguing that they are a hybrid form, with the unique qualities of both.