Valtsani Mills – Revamping an old Mill

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This is my submission for the Converted Contest. My project involved the conversion of an old and abandoned mill factory to a multi-cultural center which extends beyond the building itself to provide people with an opportunity to blend with nature, history and culture.
Unfortunately, in Greece there is a tendency for old buildings to be left abandoned and then be demolished. Due to that practice a lot of buildings of significant architectural importance have been lost especially in bigger cities like Athens and Thessaloniki. That was my starting point, as what I really wanted to achieve was to restore the building to its former glory and establish the link with the past and its history.
By converting the mill and its surroundings to a living cultural space with historical references, I hope that it will establish a bond with history and architecture and eventually upgrade the state of the area which is quite relegated.
The project is developed in three phases; the building itself, the surrounding space of 56.000 sq. feet (5.200 sq. meter) and the interior spaces.
For the building the interference was minimal and it served the point to accent the industrial character of the building by placing metal columns that embrace the building from both sides, thus highlighting its volume and “imposing” quality.
The surrounding area has been designed in a human-centric approach, offering people the opportunity to enjoy both nature and history. For that reason, the open space hosts spare parts of machinery that were used in the factory acting as an open museum.
For the interior spaces I emphasized on the industrial character even at places where a more delicate approach could be assumed to be the best one (ballet room). Those contrasting elements will hopefully stimulate the interest of the visitor towards the building while he is “living” it.
For this project, five spaces were designed; The main entrance, the dancing room, the lounge room, the roof garden and the library.
For the main entrance I have placed a rail track that crosses the building from the one end to the other. This rail track is a tribute to the old factory, which had a dedicated rail track for the goods to be transported.
For the library I followed a different approach, by designing a modern space which is airy and spacious providing the needed calmness for the readers.
On a final note, most of the interior spaces were designed utilizing two stories with a loft connecting them. That seemed the obvious solution to expand the space vertically, since the width of the building posed certain limitations given its public character (only 29.5 ft long – 9 meters).

I hope you enjoy!
Thank you.

P.S. Link to imagery (wetransfer) : https://bit.ly/2TT6NkS

Neo Ark Animation

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I’ve long thought that re-proposing things is sometimes better than recycling. Ship-breaking yards kill hundreds of desperate workers each year in South-East Asia, just to recycle the steal. As the wages are the lowest in these countries and health and safety, and environmental regulations are pretty much non existent, companies take their ships to be retired and recycled there.

What if we didn’t put finances first, but considered people and the natural environment before profit.
I’ve chosen the ULCC hull type to demonstrate this concept as these ships are amongst the largest ever constructed. One ULCC in particular, the Seawise Giant will be the ship I convert. Although it has already been dismantled there are many such ships that are approaching their end and have the potential of being repurposed. The ship will sail under the new name Covenant, the first of the NeoArk ships.

Here I’ve preserved the ship’s hull structure almost completely constructing the housing units into where the cargo hold compartments used to be. The center cargo area I have cleared and converted into a green space filled with fruiting trees and edible herb gardens. This area also contains multiple play and exercise areas. Each cargo hold segment of the ship will contain a “neighborhood” with a total of 14 such areas. Within the livable spaces there are two special use floors that house amongst other things, schools, a library, gyms and function spaces. Some of these will be local to the neighborhood block while others will be a shared service. The community blocks will be book ended by two further special use areas that may include entertainment and science spaces. Two of the neighborhood blocks will be smaller than the others as they will accommodate view decks that will open up to the outside. These areas can be closed off to create a water tight internal space in case of rough weather.

On the outside the Covenant will have a new bridge and crew quarters with a new more powerful hybrid engine. Power will be generated mostly using solar panels that run across almost the entire length of the ship above the service deck. Around the bridge will be a land area for VTOL craft as well as 4 small hangers that can take helicopters to a below deck service and parking bay.

The Covenant will be equipped with 44 large lifeboats, 6 patrol/scout boats, 6 SH-60 Seahawk helicopters and 1 V-22 Osprey.

I have created 1 animation at the moment with a lengthier one planned that will explain the NeoArk project in a documentary style short film.

The Main Animation can be viewed at the below link
https://we.tl/t-CTsUqxyDGk

HUYA (final entry)

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ARCHITECTURAL CONCEPT

I decided to focus on developing of Western Yards. There were 4 main ideas in the architectural concept:
1. I aimed to avoid the temptation to use “futuristic” architecture as much as possible. The shift in architecture between 2040 and 2020 will be about the same as the shift between 2020 and 2000.
2. In recent years, European architects have been designing more and more often in New York. I assume that the European trend will only increase in the future, so I decided to move away from the classic New York skyscraper and use European architects with an international name as reference.
3. I used the classic New York grid in plan to fit the design into the fabric of the city
4. A very important reference was the work of Superstudio

TECHNICAL SOLUTIONS

In order to better understand what New York looks like, I decided to watch the «Suits» series (and it is awesome). There were several aerials shots with cool view on Manhatten in each episode. And it inspired me to show project from different perspectives, including aerials.
From the very beginning of the project, I knew that I would make a lot of wide shots and bird-views, so I needed to quickly create an environment model. I decided to model the whole environment (even use railclone) – smacks of madness, so I decided to look for workarounds. My research led me to understand that with Blender and very basic programming, I can get a part of the model out of Google maps. Since this is a non-profit project, Google’s license doesn’t prohibit this (trust me, I watched 3 seasons of «Suits», which is almost the same as getting a bachelor’s degree in law)
All buildings of the HUYA project are modeled using railclone. This gives you a freedom to change the architecture and layout during the project and allows you to keep 3d scene light and comfortable to work with.

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«Lighthouses»

This image is inspired by one of my favourite movies «The Lighthouse» (2019)

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«Smog and flamingos»

This picture is an ode to my love for Superstudio (est. 1966–1978)
Adolfo Natalini wrote in 1971 “…if design is merely an inducement to consume, then we must reject design; if architecture is merely the codifying of bourgeois model of ownership and society, then we must reject architecture; if architecture and town planning is merely the formalization of present unjust social divisions, then we must reject town planning and its cities…until all design activities are aimed towards meeting primary needs. Until then, design must disappear. We can live without architecture…»
It seemed ironic to rethink their great and radical “anti-architecture” into something closer to reality and even commercial. It is interesting to observe how their ideas of “architecture of the monument”, “architecture of the image”, and “technomorphic architecture”, translated into reality, completely lose their radicalism and, at the same time, a significant part of their original meaning, reducing only to aesthetics.
The dense smog that is present on this and firther images is a reminder that 2040 may not be about robots and flying cars, but about environmental problems if we do not change our attitude to environmental issue.
I like this picture because it is quite simple, and at the same time it perfectly conveys the essence of the project.

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«Poster 1»

The main reference was a poster for the Fritz Lang’s movie «Metropolis» (1926), which was created by Boris Bilinsky
Each project should have a name. Especially project in NY. Word «HUYA» is composed of first letters – HUdson YArds.
Initially, I had doubts whether to post this picture as one of 3 main pictures or not. But I just like it too much.

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«Grid»

In this picture I wanted to emphasize the facade architecture with creating the illusion of an «endless» grid by reflecting the facade in the water. I’ve decided to play with scale by having «endless» grid and small but very bright person in the middle of the image.
There is still a hint of Superstudio, but the main reference was the work of David Chipperfield.

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«Red circle»

This image is inspirated by photoproject «ALTERNATIVES LANDSCAPES» (2012) by Benoit Paille.

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«The Weather Project»

Image is inspired by installation «The Weather Project» which Olafur Eliasson has created in 2003. And ofcourse I did not miss the opportunity to pay tribute to the brilliant «Blade runner 2049» (I really wanted to not do this in this project in order to avoid any references to the «futuristic» future, but I could not resist).
This image supports topic of air pollution which I started in image 2/9.

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«Drone»

Initially, I wanted to add drones in this project, because I am sure that in the 2040m delivery by drones will play an important role. However, I decided to do it less straightforward. I wanted to create a flying drone feel in this picture without showing the drone itself.
Another important element is the texture of the render itself. Render noise differs from film noise and ISO noise in photos. But it also has its own aesthetics.
For some time I have been reflecting on the fact that the texture of paints in painting and film noise in photography have long been important elements of artistic expression. While at CG we are still trying to hide the texture while we are trying to disguise our work as a «perfect photography».

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«Plastic and whales»

I did not want to create a picture of a post-apocalyptic flooded city. I wanted to give a feeling of weird dream. When real objects meet those that cannot be there.
Water plays a big role in this project (water in the park and a view of the river). In this picture I wanted to hyperbolize this connection. I wanted to show turbid water (which still does not lose its beauty) as a continuation of the previously mentioned pollution topic.
This picture is not some kind of manifesto or appeal. This is a strange dream of an ordinary resident of HUYA. After this dream, he wakes up and decides that it is time to sort plastic a little more carefully.

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«Poster 2»

This is a view from the Vessel on the opposite bank.
This is an experiment about balance between abstract emotions and concrete facts.
Formally, the picture shows Western Yard’s buildings and the view, but in reality it does not show anything. As well as it gives accurate data about the areas in this project, however, in reality, these data seem totally abstract to us.

CABINS / elschilling : Final images

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Surfers Utopia Cabin

A place to connect with mother nature, get inspired by cosmos waves and dance with ocean.

Naturally inspired by IBUKU.

Very happy to participate and learn so much with such talented people.

The images are virtual, but the feellings are real! Thank you all

https://www.yulio.com/r15EXvhWHv

CABINS / rdashkevicz : Sweet Solitude

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Sweet Solitude, my Cabins entry. I enjoy participating in these challenges. Its also a great excuse to build out my personal library and build skills that I normally don’t flex. These images were rendered in Unreal Engine. I made some blueprint “code” to step through the scene and render each camera as a panorama. I rendered some of the views as night and day shots as well. It was a pleasure using the Megascans for this project, the quality is really amazing and works well with UE4. Yulio link here : https://www.yulio.com/nFOcKeLACC