If you were ever a fan of the hit television show, The Brady Bunch then you’ve most likely seen an episode where Mr. Brady presents a miniature model of a development to a potential real estate investor.
Today, most of the time anyway, those miniature models of houses or commercial developments have largely been replaced with computer modeling. But here in the Hamptons, there is still a need for the old school way of presenting a potential real estate project, and the guy that many architectural firms hire to build those models is a man named Gary Lawrance who lives and works in Stony Brook and has been doing the trade for over 30 years.
Gary owns the firm Lawrance Architectural Presentations, which provides design presentations, architectural models and design development services to architects, landscape architects and their clients.
The construction of real estate models is an art form in itself, and Mr. Lawrance has developed his business around it, and he’s been doing it for over 30 years.
These miniature models allow clients to see a building as if they were viewing it from an airplane. The models are completely to scale, are colored perfectly, and are built before actual land is broken so that a real estate buyer can get a visual of their future home that they can feel and touch.
In many ways, his miniature models are artistic sales tools and they are highly valuable to prestigious Hamptons architects who have clients who would rather see a miniature model they can feel and touch over a computer screen. And while computers today can print out models using 3-D technology, Mr. Lawrance prefers to do all of his work by hand.
Nearly all of the major firms on the East End have utilized his talents, including Butt Otruba-O’Connor, Peter Cook, Di Sunno Architecture, Francis Fleetwood, Frank Greenwald, John Laffey… the list goes on and on. Mr. Lawrance produces the models at a rate of three every month. Each one with his masterful touch.
