Inspiring Story: How Arckit inspires an artist to realise his ideas
"Arckit gives me the best opportunities to realize my ideas with the most advanced and inexpensive modular building system available. It allows me considerable originality in the final build and adapts well with different elements outside the Arckit box."
Gerry Sperry
We recently received an email from a gentleman called Gerry Sperry from Washington in the US who blew us away with the images of a model he made, that we felt an obligation to share his creation with our community.
"In model railroading the most popular trend is almost always toward the industrial traditions of the 19thand 20th centuries, whereas I always wanted to be able to incorporate contemporary modernism with older styles to reflect the temporal dynamism of real cities today."
An artist and retired teacher, Gerry has for a lifetime had special interests in architectural design, urban planning, model building and model railroading. This was clearly apparent from the stunning interurban passenger railroad model he made incorporating contemporary urban structures using Arckit with more traditional buildings from another era. His idea represents an urban setting where all the necessary amenities are within a 15-minute walk.
What struck me most the moment I saw his model was how he understood that Arckit could be interpreted at any scale you envisage it to be, depending on its surroundings and context. This is something I’ve always tried to emphasise ever since Arckit’s inception. Here Gerry has adapted Arckit at Z-scale (1:220) incorporating a hotel, apartments, museum, sky bridge, offices, public market etc and he says that when fully complete, it will become a permanent installation. 
I reached out to Gerry to thank him for sharing his beautiful work and was moved by his reply about how Arckit enables him to pursue his passion and inspire new possibilities. He told me that back in the ’70’s he had a go a creating a building system of his own.
"Arckit gives me the means to afford-ably see some of my ideas come to fruition, quickly and at a manageable scale, while I steadily add to my collection of components so that I can realize more original and fun designs. So many new ideas occur to me as I build, that I imagine more possibilities than I have time."
For me, Gerry’s creation embodies and exemplifies what Arckit is all about as an affordable working design tool, open to all, for spontaneously bringing your ideas to life. Arckit works as a stand-alone modelling platform or as one which harmoniously integrates with traditional model building methods and architectural styles as his diorama demonstrates so well.
Something else that I frequently try to get across is that Arckit is a product to be enjoyed by adults as much as by children for its fun, engaging, collaborative and stimulating benefits.
Gerry is certainly testimony to this.
You can check out Gerry’s incredible model and lots more Arckit builds by our amazing community here.