Archviz 101

Introduction

I'm an architect educated at Chalmers University of Technology, and École Nationale Supérieure d'Architecture de Paris-La Villette. Currently I am studying Architectural Visualisation at YRGO, in Gothenburg. This entry is a documentation of the progress I've made during the first year, in reverse chronological order.

Urban Architecture

The largest project in terms of scale and complexity during our first year at YRGO. We were tasked by MillerHare visualisation studio to produce images for developing areas around King's Cross, London.

Six groups were assigned different areas - Residential, Commercial and the open area of Granary Square. The first two have some spectacular contemporary architecture to visualise, but Granary Square was a bit more difficult. It's a popular urban space in the summer, with water features and restaurants in the surrounding old brick buildings, but no clear architectonic centerpiece to focus on.

In my project, I chose to instead focus on the permanent residents of Granary Square: the design students of Central Saint Martins, and the pigeons. In a series of images, we follow the ambitious students through the school year. In the first image, we can see them exhausted but celebrating after project critique on a gloomy November day. In the second image, a student is working late in the studio on a warm evening in May, while her boyfriend patiently waits below on the bench. In the final image, a sunny day in July, the school is closed for the summer, but the students sit in front, longing to go back in the autumn.

[3DS Max/Railclone/Chaos Scatter/Photoshop]

Matte Painting

For this project we were to choose an AI-image service of our choice, and generate four different building concepts. The rest of the students then voted on which concept we would continue working on in Photoshop. In my case I chose Midjourney, after a brief comparative study using the same prompts in Midjourney, Adobe Firefly and Stable Diffusion. The rest of the matte painting composite was to contain at least 10 different source images.

[Midjourney/Photoshop]

The Villa

Originally a personal project made to learn Autodesk Revit, I revisited the project for the fourth assignment in Architectural Visualization. This villa was a site-less project to begin with. As such it was designed to be an introspective atrium house, with few and small windows to the outside world, instead focusing inward. For the visualisation, I chose a baltic landscape, with sand dunes and pine trees, complementing the corten facade of the building.

In this assigment, the focus was to learn to use the Forest Pack and Railclone plugins to 3DS Max. We were to choose a villa, and model it from 2D DWG-drawings. We then modeled the landscape around it. Only minimal Photoshop editing was allowed, such as light and colour correction, and adding people.

[3DS Max/Vray/Photoshop]

The Hotel

For the fourth project, we were to work in teams of four. We were also assigned a place somewhere in the world, in which we were to design a small boutique hotel. Each team member was to create one image, for one space in the hotel. In our case we were assigned Tunis, and were to create images for lobby, spa, guest room and restaurant, respectively.

Our concept was threefold:

1. Vernacular spaces. We studied the local history of residential architecture, and found a series of interesting ideas we wanted to use in our hotel.

Firstly, the Berbers, who have a long history of subterranean dwellings in the rocky desert south of Tunis. Another common housing typology is the Riad, a type of atrium house found across the Maghreb and Andalus region. Its spaces are arranged around one or more central courtyards, that often include gardens, and water features. The decorative arabesque screens found all over the Islamic world provide shade and privacy, but also ample ventilation. Finally the roof top terraces seen all over northern Africa, that become popular social spaces as the sun sets. This sequence of spaces create a gradient from enclosed to completely open to the outer world, and from subterranean to open air, and is the basis of our project.

2. Modulated light. Tunisia has a very harsh midday sun, but the light also gets filtered through vegetation and screens of the buildings.

This, combined with the highly varied lighting conditions of our different spaces, made us think of the chiaroscuro technique of the renaissance, with its gradient of deep, rich shadows, to lighter tones. This was something we would also focus on during our process.

3. L'ecole de Tunis. For inspiration, we researched Tunisian art history. We found the L’ecole de Tunis, or The Tunis school, which was a post-war and post colonial effort to find a truly Tunisian art movement. A painting by Abdelaziz Gorgi caught our attention, and became the third and final inspiration for our project, especially the colour palette and the vaulted shapes of the women in the painting.

We imagined the hotel being an old riad, with a large cellar for storage. This cellar was turned into an underground spa, with a central pool in the atrium, which the space revolves around. The opening provides a visual contact with upper floors, and lets in the sun and greenery, while Jacuzzis and seating groups can be found in the adjacent niches.

[3DS Max/Corona Render/Photoshop]

The Chair

The third project was focused on developing our 3D-modelling skills. The assignment was to select a chair of our own choosing, consisting of at least three different materials. We were to study the chair, and model it from scratch, using nothing but photos and tracing 2D-drawings.

I chose the chair Alta, designed by architect Oscar Niemeyer in 1971. It features prominently in one of his masterpieces - the headquarters of the French communist party in Paris - where it blends in perfectly with the concrete and green carpeting in the underground lobby.

The underground setting is reminiscent of the lair of some James Bond villain, which also led me to build a scene worthy of such an iconic chair. But rather than keeping it in an underground bunker, I chose to focus on the chair’s name - Alta - meaning elevated, and placed it in an alpine setting.

Extra care was given to imperfections, such as creases in the leather, scratches on the knobs, and the authenticity of the sticker under the seat (with the correct telephone number of the dealership at the time).

[3DS Max/Corona Render/Photoshop]

The Renovation

For our second project we were tasked with finding an ad for a house on the market, in very bad condition. Two rooms were to be chosen and a proposal for renovation was to be designed. I found a house outside of Tomelilla, a small town in Skåne. It had been used as a metal workshop with living quarters. It also had a junkyard and a railroad passing by just outside, and it was in a dilapidated state.

The concept for the renovation was founded on three ideas:

- The building was constructed in the early 1900’s in a typical Swedish national romantic style; meaning a rustic exterior, with contrasting delicate small pane windows. In my proposal this is reflected in the use of materials such as exposed brick, and the choice of furniture, all using thin metal rods in their design.

- The famous Swedish designer and ceramic artist Signe Persson-Melin was born and raised in Tomelilla. Her ceramic teapot “Six-Sided” became the basis for the colour palette of turquoise, green and copper.

- The historical context of the metal workshop was now going to be re-imagined as an artists studio, with tough, durable materials and an industrial aesthetic.

[3DS Max/Corona Render/Photoshop]

Abstraction

For our first project in Architectural Visualisation we were to choose a piece of art, and interpret it into an interior space.

I chose Die Toteninsel - The Isle of The Dead, by Arnold Böcklin (1883), and re-interpreted it as a workspace: Die Totenbüro - The Office of The Dead.

[3DS Max/Corona Render/Photoshop]