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@castillo.fab

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New York City Based Architectural Model Shop & Fabrication

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A Study in Layers, Subtraction & Interaction

At NEYA, we think about how our jewelry is experienced just as much as how it is designed. Rooted in our architectural background, we wanted to extend this approach to the way our pieces are presented, leading us to design and fabricate our own display tables.

Inspired by nature and its fundamental relationship with architecture, the tables are built layer by layer, with portions carved away to create shelves and surfaces for the jewelry to rest on. Without traditional stands, trays or unnecessary decoration, each piece rests directly on the forms, intentionally placed and given space to speak for itself.

The two forms were designed in dialogue with one another, their shapes inviting people to approach, explore and become part of that conversation. We want to encourage curiosity, invite questions and create an experience where the jewelry and its surrounding environment are appreciated as part of the same design process.

Fabrication studio: @castillo.fab

The pieces shown in this image were temporarily arranged to explore how they sit within the shelves and interact with the forms, rather than to reflect the final display layout.

Seen here the cross brace ring, the contour ring and the double vault earrings (small and large) in both Sterling Silver and 18K Gold.

A Study in Layers, Subtraction & Interaction

At NEYA, we think about how our jewelry is experienced just as much as how it is designed. Rooted in our architectural background, we wanted to extend this approach to the way our pieces are presented, leading us to design and fabricate our own display tables.

Inspired by nature and its fundamental relationship with architecture, the tables are built layer by layer, with portions carved away to create shelves and surfaces for the jewelry to rest on. Without traditional stands, trays or unnecessary decoration, each piece rests directly on the forms, intentionally placed and given space to speak for itself.

The two forms were designed in dialogue with one another, their shapes inviting people to approach, explore and become part of that conversation. We want to encourage curiosity, invite questions and create

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We’re two weeks away from our first pop-up, where the world around NEYA will take physical form for the first time.

We’ve been designing our own display tables from the ground up, working with @castillo.fab to bring them to life. Inspired by the relationship between nature and the built environment, the tables explore how natural forms can become part of the spaces we live in.

Rising as two separate objects, they will sit beside one another as fragments of the same landscape, connected through material, contours and proximity. Where one recedes, the other responds.

We’ve approached the process much like an architectural model, moving from concept and sketches to 3D modeling, while considering the constraints of the pop-up environment, materiality, structure, and fabrication.

We’ve explored layer thicknesses, stepped contours that become shelving, material durability, structural support and texture, translating something digital into something physical.

This process mirrors how we approach jewelry at NEYA: distilling an idea, structure or form to its essential elements and translating it to the scale of the body. Whether at the small scale of the body or the scale of a space, the same principles of proportion, material, form and movement guide the design.

Our displays aren’t simply somewhere to place our jewelry. They’re an extension of NEYA and the world of architecture we’re building around it, shaped to draw you in and invite you to explore the pieces on display.

Stay tuned for the final result! 🪨✨

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Echo Pond

Model: Castillo Fab @castillo.fab
Scale: 1/4” = 1’-0”
Overall dimensions: 46” x 40” x 17”

Client: Of Possible

Castillo Fab had the opportunity to fabricate a 1/4" scale model of @of_possible's Echo Pond project. Built by @nsbuilders, Echo Pond is Scandinavian-inspired design featuring pine tar–finished plywood mega-shingles that define the façade.

As an NYC-based architectural model fabrication studio, Castillo Fab worked closely with the design team to create an archive model that reflects both the character and materiality of the project.

The model features a removable roof that reveals the interior, where wood elements and UV-printed textures highlight the home's material palette. It sits on a CNC-milled high-density foam base with hand-finished terrain details, while the facade features black-stained maple veneer to echo the pine tar–finished plywood of the mega-shingles.

The final photos show the sample model they produced before fabricating the finished piece. Castillo Fab creates a sample model for every architectural model project to test materials, finishes, and fabrication techniques, ensuring they’re aligned with their clients before moving into production. Whether it's a study, marketing, exhibition, or archive model, this step helps them create scale models that faithfully capture each project's unique design.

#models_architecture #architecturemodel #modelmaking #castillofab #sitemodel #landscapemodel #facademodel #architecturemodelphotography #architectureproject #echopond

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Vilcek Foundation New York Headquarters

Model: Castillo Fab @castillo.fab
Scale: 3/16” = 1’-0”
Overall dimensions: 18” x 9” x 11”

Client: Vilcek Foundation @vilcekfoundation
Painting by Erhan Mues @erhanmues

Castillo Fab's model of the Vilcek Foundation's New York headquarters is now on display in their Upper East Side office. As an NYC-based architectural model fabrication studio, Castillo Fab was given the opportunity to create a set of two models celebrating the foundation's expansion. The Vilcek Foundation is a nonprofit organization dedicated to raising awareness of immigrant contributions to art and science in the United States.

The model was fabricated using acrylic, PLA, and resin-printed components, then finished in matte white to tie all together. The final images also show the sample model developed before fabricating the finished piece. Castillo Fab creates a sample model for every project, giving clients the opportunity to review materials, finishes, and fabrication details before full production.

Whether producing exhibition, archive, marketing, competition or study models, their goal is to communicate their clients design intent and sensibility. They enjoy collaborating with architects, developers, curators, artists, and cultural institutions to bring their ideas to life through thoughtful architectural model fabrication.

#models_architecture #architecturemodel #modelmaking #castillofab #facademodel #architecturemodelphotography #newyorkarchitecture #architectureproject #vilcekfoundationnewyorkheadquarters #vilcekfoundation

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Of Possible,
The Findling (2025)
Construction by Sean Casey
Model by Castillo.Fab
Materials by 475 High Performance Building Supply
Photography by Rory Gardiner (1-6,10),
Jake Balston (7,9)
Images by Darcstudio (8,11,12,13)

@of_possible @alulawoodworks @castillo.fab
@475.supply @arorygardiner @jakebalston
@darcstudio_

#ofpossible

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Architecture is an assembly of many technologies. As the rate of innovation and sophistication of these increases, the probability of architecture collaging the production of other industries seams to increase.

The collage in architecture holds a special status as a design strategy. Entire design languages have emerged charismatically crafting aesthetics of collage. However, the aestheticizing of technological milieu can slip into an aimless commodification of architecture and distract from elemental innovation.

Technologies have an arc to the rate of their innovation (e.g. Moore’s Law). Sometimes as a technology approaches a late period in its life cycle the rate of innovation declines. Instead of revolutionary increments of improvement, smaller increments of refinement, and even regression set in (e.g. Law of Diminishing Returns, S-Curve, Feature Creep, Complexity-Fragility Trade-off). Eventually “improvements” risk complication and exposure to liabilities.

The Findling is elemental out of economic and philosophical necessity. Each building component is essential and reduced as far as possible. For example, all glass windows are simply glazed directly into wooded jambs. No glass is operable. This dramatically reduces cost and maximizes sight-lines. Egress and fresh air are provided by opening insulated and gasketed shutters that are simply part of the wall. These cost less to make and provide greater insulation and air sealing value per dollar compared to high performance windows. Another example is the roof which is simply bitumen sheets. Seams are reinforced by wrapping battens in bitumen over each seam location. This coincidently nods to a more technologically advanced metal standing seam roof.

The result is an architecture of the essential, elemental, reductive, intuitive, natural, and whole. Everythign is intrinsicly related to the whole and nothing can be removed as excessive.

¹ Model
²⁻³ Shutter details
⁴ Window detail
⁵⁻⁷ Window installation
⁸ Plan

#Architecture @Of_Possible⁠
#Construction @alulawoodworks
#Models @castillo.fab⁠
#Photographs @jakebalston
⁠#Images @DarcStudio_⁠
#Highperformancematerials @475.supply

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Architecture is an alignment problem and the result is on a scale that can be described with limits at a minimum viable product on the one side and maximum viable product on the other. The design process aligns a constantly evolving set of variables that change from project to project and over time within any given project (i.e. budgets, material and labor availability, emotions, ideas, schedules, ambitions, etc.). The amount of energy invested in design establishes the degree to which “solving” this alignment problem can be optimized.

With limited energy the design process trends towards a linear approach to problem solving. As energy and resources increase, the design process can become more iterative, recursive, and able to test upper and lower limits of solutions. The Findling is an example of a maximum viable product.

In the spirit of differentiating the building as much as possible from its neighbor on the property, we attempted to make it entirely out of wood. An earlier design iteration was heavy timber structural framing with connections to the boulders inspired by Ethan Stebbins @stebbinsdesign. Even the hinges, door handles, sinks, nails, and every single component except for the glass and boulders was to be wood. We were more than a million dollars over budget. The project was redesigned with a more common light frame assembly.

Pushing the idea of the all-wood building so far and past the budget was not a waste during design. Ideas were encountered. Feasible all-wood details for sinks, windows, shutters, the rainscreen, roof, and other elements were discovered.

To create a project intentionally positioned between minimum and maximum viable product is only possible with a highly iterative and recursive design process that closely involves everyone including clients, builders, authorities, engineers, supply chains, manufacturers, etc. through design. A client request for a minimal or maximal viable project has equal potential provided you arrive there intentionally.

#Architecture @Of_Possible⁠
#Construction @alulawoodworks
#Models @castillo.fab⁠
#Photographs @jakebalston⁠
#Insulation @Rockwoolna⁠
#Highperformancematerials @475.supply

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"BLESSED ARE THE MODEL MAKERS" @archpaper

Article link in bio.

Honored to be among the greats in this article by The Architect's Newspaper. Thanks to my friend and Snohetta colleague, Donesh, for his words.

Written by @diana_b
Photography by @christopherpaynephoto

@snohetta
@oakcollective
@radiiinc
@jennythemodelmaker
@castillo.fab
@kennedyfabrications
@tenguerian.models
@adrian72models

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The Findling

"We are a landscape of all we have seen.” - Isamu Noguchi

The home is sited partially within a woodland edge. Half of the home rests over a New England stone wall built between 1770 and 1830 when the land was cleared for farming. Stone walls like this are features of New England’s cultural landscape and are found deep in new growth forests of the region. They are now historic relics scavenged for new field stone walls throughout the country. In the late 18th century when the wild forest on this landscape was cleared the shallow rocky soils were no longer bound together by roots. Without roots holding the soils in place each winter to spring the freeze-thaw cycle would push rocks to the surface. Imagine being a farmer of this land in the 18th century and each year the land has a surreal greeting for you: new rocks pressing through the surface of your field as if it were growing stones! Those farmers must have had a sense of humor as they cleared their fields of stones each season and stacked them into walls.

Two 5’ tall boulders were found on the property and placed on concrete footings in line with the original stone wall. Two much larger boulders over 10’ tall were found at a quarry nearby. These range in weights from 20,000 lbs to over 60,000 lbs.

To prevent the stones from migrating on their footings, a 1” diameter stainless steel pin was set 18” into the concrete footings and the bottom of the boulders. At the top of the stones bearing plates for the steel frame were bolted to the boulders with threaded rods.

The single pin at the base of each stone alowed them to be rotated for the most appropriate orientation. Natural stones have a stance. Intentionally positioning them in relation to the landscape and building above gives the architecture a posture and friendly nature.

¹ Physical model
²⁻⁴ Placing the boulders from the site
⁵⁻¹⁰ Placing the boulders from the quarry

#Architecture @Of_Possible⁠
#Construction @alulawoodworks
#Models @castillo.fab⁠
#Photographs @jakebalston
#Highperformancematerials @475.supply
#Masonry @cgstoneinc
#Rigging @radiuscraneandrigging
#Sitevisit @NSBuilders @motifmediaco
#Inspiration @noguchimuseum

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The Findling

How can architecture be made of a place, of the land, or of something else? “Of” is a word worth reflecting on for architecture. As the preposition “of” provides linguistic access to relationships such as parts to a whole, measures and scale, people to groups, people to other things, an indication of origin or derivation, and cause or reason, architectures “of” have these relational values as well. There is some intrinsic, emotional, alchemic, and esoteric value given function through the relational creativity occurring when making architectures “of”.

For The Findling, the home needed to be of this place and it needed to be the alter-ego of another house, The Pond House, on the same property. While The Pond House was built on concrete and steel boldly cantilevered over water and proudly visible from all sides around the pond, The Findling rests on 500 million year old+ glacial erratic boulders found on the property and from a nearby quarry. The building “floats” not over water but over the rugged landscape resting on these boulders. It is both grounded and untethered as is the ambition for the clients’ relationship to their memories of this place.

Where do these ideas come from? On the one hand the moment in design when we noticed the stone wall was when we encountered the idea of using boulders for the foundation. On the other hand, we have in our memories feelings of awe discovering seemingly out of place glacial erratics hiking through these woods as children, and more recently that same feeling of wonder from the work of artist Allan Wexler and his relational explorations between art & design. Those memories have been waiting to become a project. Memories like these are themselves "findlings" in the creative process upon which ideas can be built.

¹ Physical model
² “Footing” 2012 by @allanwexlerstudio
³ Absurd Thinking Between Art and Design by

#Architecture @Of_Possible⁠
#Construction @alulawoodworks
#Models @castillo.fab⁠
#Photographs @jakebalston
#Insulation @Rockwoolna⁠
#Highperformancematerials @475.supply
#Masonry @cgstoneinc
#Sitevisit @NSBuilders @motifmediaco

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