What is an « architectural model » ? To what extent can « architectural models » be distinguished from heat science models, from fluid mechanics models, from biological models, but also from models in sociology, anthropology or history of architecture ? Can we define, found and implement a specific form of « architectural modeling » ? For what purposes ?« Architectural modeling », as it is formulated, studied and experimented in this PhD thesis, is a form of knowledge production that is comfortable with its purposes : organizing, deploying and making economically viable the delivery of an architectural design service for the daily making of artifacts that are today both « huge » and largely devoid of any architecture : the street, the public space and, further, the whole of urban residential development (and sprawl) that our cities have known in the past decades.The work presented here :* studies the role of models and modeling in the current evolution of scientific practices so as to question the roles models and modeling could play in the fields of architecture and urban design ;* establishes a first methodological and epistemological framework on the basis of which I have been able to undertake ten « architectural modeling » experiences (fully presented in volume 2) ;* describes how, going from experience to experience, from epistemological paradigm to epistemological paradigm, I have been conduced to evolve the political and methodological framework of « architectural modeling » as I have experimented it in the fields of street design, public space co-conception and the elaboration of urban and suburban processes and policies of densification of the existing urban fabric ;* proposes, finally, a contribution to the formulation of an « architectural modeling paradigm » that relies upon constructivist epistemologies but that does not deny, in the same time, a certain speculative dimension in the work of discovering architectural models.