Mock-up. 1:1. Architectural Experiments. Photographs by David K. Ross

In architecture, a “mock-up” is a materially accurate demonstration model that reproduces a section of a building on a real scale and ideally as part of in its future environment. The underlying intention of these objects, realised on nearly standard-base in Switzerland, is to understand the appearance and detailed design of a project before the actual construction begins. These models are usually photographed only in passing, but the Canadian photographer and filmmaker David K. Ross has turned them into artistic objects. In his photo project Archetypes, begun in 2016, he portrays them as heroic monuments, but also as dreamlike and uncanny pseudo-architectures. In 2021, the S AM Swiss Architecture Museum in Basel used. Ross’s series as the starting point for an exhibition to explore the extended potential of mock-ups between what is simulation and reality. The exhibition at Kunst Meran / Merano Arte, on the other hand, focuses on the critical interface between planning and execution – one that does not exist in either the regional or national context of South Tyrol or Italy. And poses the question: why not?