Every project at SASSO begins on the model table. Long before a client sees a rendering, a partner has cut a site out of basswood and placed a first volume on it — rough, quick and easy to throw away.

Thinking at 1:200

At this scale a house is the size of a matchbox. Nothing is precious. We test where the sun falls in winter, how the roof meets the slope and which trees must stay. Three or four of these models are made in a single afternoon.

Light you can hold

A model can be carried to the window. In five minutes it tells us more about morning light than a day of calculation. Later we build at 1:50 and 1:20, and the last models are full-size samples of joinery and render.

Clients often keep the first model. It is the moment the house became real.