Kevin Sweeney

Generating images is something AI is also good at. I've been using it to help with designing a banner for the exhibition, to act as a backdrop for the models. It is doing great work there, the results look fantastic. But I gave it the architectural drawings of Luggala, which I got from the planning portal. And the end result was a total failure. It was not even close. The drawings it produced looked great but were totally wrong. I suspect that spatial intelligence maybe well be beyond AI. Time will tell which of us right. Although I would say that having worked in the dotcom sector in the last years of the 20th century the hype around AI has a oddly familiar resonance. In both cases the promoters have an incentive to hype it up in order to drawn in investment. And just like the dotcom boom, the AI boom has yet to turn a profit. To paraphrase an old joke from the dotcom era, how do you make a small fortune in the AI sector ? You start with a big one.

I suppose it's all relative Derek, it took 3 days to build, whereas Townley Hall took about a month. The last model in the series will be Kilkenny Castle, I estimate about 10 weeks to build that. Although optimism bias is always a factor. There are 13 different parts to the castle. There are 85 sheets of plans of the castle in the Irish Architectural Archive. The footprint in n scale will be 600mm x 600mm. It will be the biggest and most ambitious model I've ever attempted Compared to that a labourers cottage is a quick build.

A quick build, Dunsland Cottage, Kilcoolisha, Co Cork. Labourers cottage built in 1890, in the Arts and Crafts style. My experiment with using Chatgpt to do the drawings for Luggalla was a complete failure. It didn't get the proportions anywhere near right and the drawings it produced were a total washout, even though they looked great. It is a very good search engine, is a useful tool for generating text and it's great for translating English into Irish, but it is totally useless at interpreting drawings. Based on this experiment, architects, and draughtsmen can relax, AI is not coming for their jobs. So I still have to do my drawings myself with Inkscape. So much for the thesis that AI will soon be smarter than humans. Based on this experiment it has a very long way to go.

It will be interesting to see how good Chatgpt is at making this kind of kit. I've used it a lot in recent months when searching for interesting buildings to model.

My next build is Luggala. A beautiful gothic revival house in the Wicklow Mountains. I found archictects drawings on the planning portal, but i wanted to model the building as it apperared on the 1901 OS map. So l uploaded the map and the planning drawings to Chatgpt and asked it to untangle the 1901 building from the modern one. it came up with this set of drawings, which look great and will allow me to make a card mockup before I start the build. If these drawings are accurate I'm particulary interested in the curved roofs and the the bow walls. If Chatgpt got the geometry right I will be very pleased as maths is not my stongpoint and these kind of features take me a lot of time as I have to do it by trial and error. Time will tell, but the drawings look great. and even if the geometry turns out to be wrong I can still generate the texture sheets from them.

I've just finished a pair of semi detached art deco houses, which are in Glenageary. Although I just noticed looking at the photos I forgot to put the sills on the gable windows. My talk in the County Museum went well, good turn out and I got to display my collection of house models. My model of the County Museum is now on permeant display in a glass case in the museum. I'm planning to have my next exhibition "The Irish House, 900 to 2027" ready by the end of the year. I have 4 more models to make, a gothic revival house, an arts and crafts cottage, a bauhaus house in Ranelagh, and as a great centre piece Kilkenny Castle. A total of 35 models. The problem with my last exhibition is that it was all Cavan buildings, so once it finished in the County museum, there was nowhere else to go with it. The next exhibition can go to any county museum on the island of Ireland. I'm toying with the idea of moving onto Irish churches next.

I have lots of time on my hands. I find modelling is very theraputic. When I'm working on a model, my own troubles and the troubles of the world are far away.

Thanks Derek. I'm pleased with but it a much simpler model than many I have built, it's a great piece of neo classical archicture but it has very clean lines and not a lot of complex features.

Townley Hall is finished.

My latest project, Townley Hall, Co Louth. The glass cupola is one of the trickest things I've ever made. I'm doing a talk next Saturday in the County Museum in Ballyjamesduff, about the history of Irish houses. I will have about 20 models on display. The Evolution of House Dwellings in Ireland | Facebook

I'm back modelling after a bit of a hiatus. I'm in a Plantation of Ulster phase at the moment. I'm getting close to finishing a model of Tully Castle in Co Fermanagh. Built in the Scottish Baronial style in the early 1600s, it was captured by rebels in 1641, burned and never rebuilt. The two storey house is the Pendean farmhouse which dates from 1609. It is preserved in the Weald and Downland Living Museum, in Sussex. The cottage is a scaled down version of Peandan.

Getting close to a finish with this model. It's Carnalway Glebe House, which is near Newbridge, in Co KIldare. It's a tudor revival house built in the 1870s, with a well executed late 20th century extention on the rear.

I'm planning on a doing a land commission house at some stage.

A quick little modelling project, certainly simple compared to Navan Station. A Congested Districts Board cottage. Would be a suitable model for a west of ireland layout.

Navan Station is installed on the customers layout.

I often think Jack Fitzsimons and Richard Lovett Pearse were the two most influential architects in irish histoy. Fitzsimons stated the bungalow revolution and Lovett Pearse the Palladian revolution. Lovett Pearse designed among others, Castletown House, 9 and 10 Henrietta Street, the Houses of Parliament on College Green and Bellamont House. Lovett Pearse definetly wins on aesthetics.

This is the state of play with my next exhibition titled "The Irish House, 900 to 2026", I have set a deadline of October 1st to have it ready. I'm a bit more than half way there, as I'm planning to have 30 models, from a ring fort to a modern mansion. The bottom photo shows the development of rural working class housing from 1600 to 1990.

The roof is done with Scalescenes textures, so printed out, cut into stips and glued on.

Navan Station is finished. Customer is collecting it today

Getting close to a finish on Navan Station. The model will not have any canopies, some plints on the wings and downpipes will finish it.

it is a difficult style to model for sure, but a beautiful iconic style. It's long been my intention to model a classic GNR building.

Current state of play with Navan station.

I can empatise with your loss, as my wife passed away 22 months ago, after an 8 year long illnesss. For those 8 years I was her full time carer. We all handle grief differently, but for me model making was therapy and my salvation. I started model making as a distraction, for those 8 years it kept me sane. In the 22 months since she passed model making has continued to be my salvation. The beauty of model making is that it requires total focus, when you're cutting a piece, there is nothing else in that moment but that line you're cutting. Giving how mad the world is getting that ability to ignore it all and just focus on the job in hand is a wonderfull form of escapism. A good friend who also lost his wife said to me, you learn to live with it, your get on with it, but the world without them will always be a lesser place.

I done it in Inkscape, using photos to get the colours. It took a while and there were many steps in the process. I've long wanted to do a GNR building with the polycromatic brick, it's such a distincitive style.

I'm working on a OO model of Navan Station. It is my second commission.