model materials - where to buy online?

Hello!
I am an architect student as well, but located in FInland. I am glad to see that someone other than me is interested in model building especially in this day and age when a lot of presentations are done with computer renderings only.

What kind of materials are you using? What scales are you building in?
I use mostly cardboard myself, thickness between 0.5 and 3mm. I also use balsa wood, assorted hardwoods, plywood and chipboard (for the base plate).

You can scratchbuild cars without major problems. I built a few cars for a 1:200 model once. I got the accurate scale by printing images in scale which were taken from the computer programme Archicad and its library. I could then carve the car from a piece of balsa wood (very soft and easy to work with). I then added wheels which were made from plastic rod and painted it a few times to hide the structure of the wood.
I made about ten of them and they took about 20 minutes each to make.

Here is a link to a site I found
http://www.howardmodels.com/supplies/