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Immersing ourselves into Instagram's extensive photo galleries, we discovered a record of modern aesthetics, minimalist design, with a warm color palette that seeks to represent noble materials — all these assemble into incredible digital worlds created by the self-taught artist Alexis Christodoulou. Read on to learn about the artist's intentions, inspirations, and how he was influenced by videogames, in the following interview.
By now, you’ve likely heard about real-time rendering for architectural visualization and how it’s changing the way designs are presented. With real-time rendering, you can edit your design and see the changes updated instantly, at full quality, and you can produce animations and panoramas in minutes instead of days. Real-time rendering also opens the door to immersive experiences like 360° videos and virtual reality.
There’s a lot of buzz going on in terms of technology-driven innovation in the AEC industry. Especially the increasing use of 3D renderings and virtual reality for architectural projects is hitting every architect’s newsfeed. Photorealistic images and virtual reality walk-throughs seem to be turning into the new industry standard. That being said, for many architectural firms it seems to be hard to keep up with quickly developing new tech and thereby find ways to differentiate themselves from the competition.
Contemporary visualization tools have rendered exceptional illustrations, proving to be crucial in architectural representations today. However, some choose to explore objects in unprecedented manners instead of diving into "digital post-collage", unleashing different realms of design.
Created as an experimentation of visual narratives, (ab)Normal is a graphic patchwork that expresses design, scenography, illustration, architectures, and social utopias of a culture that revolves heavily around Internet, gaming, and religion. The iconographic images, which particularly focus on architectural representation, explore all the potentials of rendering, deconstructing, and reassembling photo-realism with a different hierarchies.
Today in the United States, buildings account for nearly 40% of carbon emissions (EESI) and 78% of electricity usage. The most sustainability-focused firms run energy simulations for less than 50% of their projects (10% for a typical firm) and only doing so late in the process when design changes are limited and insufficient to combat red flags found in the performance report (AIA 2030 report). We can make building performance widespread once we help the entire community discuss the subject in terms of investment and return. Especially during a project pursuit, since having the buy in from the whole team helps ensure the key project metrics are met. Owners are seeking out teams who are using actual metrics and data driven processes that affect their bottom line. This new approach to practice is what makes the younger teams’ standout and will benefit both the climate and the bottom-line. Here are 5 ways to talk about building performance in your project pursuits:
Swedish creative firm Studio Esinam has launched a new package from their cutout shop, offering an aid to architects and designers seeking to enliven renders and visualizations. The studio’s products, including these print elevations of iconic landmarks, are made in Sweden with an emphasis on eco-friendly materials.
The digital package, containing a diverse mix of 1000 cutouts, was created to cover a range of scenarios in daily life, including people biking, families, kids, business people as well as people dressed for all seasons. This week, ArchDaily readers are being offered a discount of £400 on the package that costs £695 by using the discount code ARCHDAILYSPECIAL at checkout here.
Every year we see new tools and techniques for better, faster architectural visualization. The last few years have been a particularly exciting time because of advances in real-time rendering applications. When coupled with supporting technology like virtual reality headsets, projectors, and graphics cards, real-time photoreal rendering is putting stunning, dynamic visualization media within reach—mixed and augmented reality worlds, interactive configurators, game-like presentations—so architects and designers can truly tell their stories.
I was part of the last generation of architectural students who didn't use computers (we’re only talking the early 1990’s here; there was electricity, color TV’s, rockets, just no renderings.) In my final year at college I miscalculated how long it would take me to finish my thesis project. As the deadline approached, I realized it was too late for me to match my fellow students’ presentations. At the time Zaha Hadid, and her deconstructivist paintings, set the style for architectural illustration. That meant many student projects being rendered in oil paints on large canvases.
Virtual reality offers benefits that, just years ago, were hardly even imaginable. Projects can be walked through before being built; the interiors fully visualized before all the details are decided. It allows architects and clients the ability to work as true collaborators in the design of a project.
Throughout history, architects have used sketches and paintings to display to their clients the potential outcomes of the projects rattling around their minds. Since Brunelleschi’s adoption of drawn perspective in 1415, architectural visualizations have painted hyper-realistic imaginings of an ideal, where the walls are always clean, the light always shines in the most perfect way, and the inhabitants are always happy.
With technological advances in 3D modeling and digital rendering, this ability to sell an idea through a snapshot of the perfect architectural experience has become almost unrestricted. Many have criticized the dangers of unrealistic renderings that exceed reality and how they can create the illusion of a perfect project when, in fact, it is far from being resolved. However, this is only the natural next step in a history of fantastical representations, where the render becomes a piece of art itself.
Below is a brief history of the interesting ways architects have chosen to depict their projects—from imagined time travel to the diagrammatic.
Since 2015, the tribal community of Apetina in the south Suriname jungle have added a women’s center and seven chicken coops to their village, and there are plans underway to realize a high school, elevated treehouses for ecotourism, a visitor center, housing projects, chicken coops, and more.
Paul Spaltman is the one-man operation behind the designs of these structures, but “everything started with these nice renders made in Lumion," he explains. "It wasn’t enough to show 2D drawings or simply tell them what the project was going to be. When they saw the actual 3D renders, it helped them believe the project was possible. They already had the design. They could see the construction and that the entire project was, more or less, thought out. They could see that the project wasn’t just a dream, but one step further.”
It’s no mystery why we put people in our designs. People are the quickest way to an emotional connection. With the right visual cues, you can evoke deep feelings, turning a simple image into a source of awe or aspiration. In architectural visualization, we try to shape those feelings, working off the perceptions most of us share. While we are all creatures of circumstance, using our experiential knowledge to guide us day-to-day, a lot of our conditioning is the same. Which is why it is so important to consider how you use people when you create visualizations of your designs.
Entourage are your visual guides, alerting the viewer to the story or feelings you want to convey. Sometimes that story is one of usage, an explanation of how someone interacts or moves about a space. Other times, it’s a bit more abstract. Whatever the direction, the art of entourage is really a study of composition, conditioning, and narrative. The more you know about each topic, the better your visualization will turn out—especially when you have a complicated brief.
In this piece, I’d like to show you how we approach entourage at Kilograph. Since our backgrounds are diverse—artists, architects, brand experts, and VR technicians—we are constantly having discussions about how to make people stand out, from a psychological and aesthetic perspective. Here’s what we’ve found.
Cape Town native Alexis Christodoulou is a winemaker by day but also dabbles in the art of 3D visualization. His Instagram (@teaaalexis) is a striking composition of intricate spaces rich with color, light, and materiality. Crafted entirely from scratch, each of Christodoulou's digital worlds appears to be influenced by many of the modernist masters. In a recent interview with Curbed, Christodoulou lists Aldo Rossi, David Chipperfield and Le Corbusier among his inspirations.
Much has been said about the new "Instagram aesthetic." Put that together with the emerging role of Instagram and other social media platforms in the design process, and the result is a new type of digital art form. Christodoulou's page is the creative collection of a year-long personal challenge to regularly create and publish images of his own fantasy worlds, which has resulted in a community of nearly 20K followers.
Get lost in more of the images below.
In the 1990s, the field of architectural design was transformed by the widespread adoption of computers and CAD programs. This revolution affected the entire design process from start to finish, including presentation techniques. Traditional watercolor paintings were replaced by computer-generated images that could show the design from multiple angles. A virtual camera could even fly through the design and produce a video tour of the yet-to-be-built concept.
The Architecture Drawing Prize received 166 entries from 26 different countries, offering a fascinating cross-section of approaches to and uses of architectural drawing today: from highly sophisticated design drawings to lyrical hand-drawn sketches, and everything in between. The exhibition retains a sense of this variety so along with the three category winners, it was decided to showcase the ten entries that received commendations from the judges.
This article was originally published by RenderPlan as "9 Powerful Photoshop Tips for an Effective Workflow."
A powerful software like Photoshop can turn an average looking image or drawing into a stellar asset for a project. The trick is to learn to use some of its best features and optimize your workflow for maximum efficiency.
Over the years Photoshop has become the go-to tool for architects for any kind of image-based editing. The software has become indispensible thanks to its versatile features. It is a powerful tool for tweaking renderings or create them from scratch. Some of the most renowned visualization artists rely heavily on Photoshop and use very crude masses done in 3d programs as a starting point. From photorealistic renderings to editing photographs of built projects and beautifying line work, Photoshop can be an architect’s best friend.
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