Final – Sunken city

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There are two worlds. After sea has risen, technology enabled us to build new, safe city environment above the ground, using massive platforms. Whole system of the city is driven by AI, and it takes care of everything. We let it take over, and many of us became obsolent. New challenge in this world is to find your calling. The Individual cult from 20 century took a hit. As it turns out, we are not so special, we are just another species.

The new world on platforms- modern, technology driven world, where human input is minimal. There are people living, but they are connected to technology in a degree that obscure real human interaction. They became soulles bodies who live in a VR world. Everyone is alone. Algorhytms can guide them throuhg their lives with ease, so they let AI to dictate their every move.

The old world – After flooding, swamp like environment is a home for many people who didnt make it to new world…mostly janitors who clean the water. After Few years from floods, This world became jungle like place, and is important source of oxygen after many of the land forest were destroyed…

New world doesnt care for the old one, yet it could not exist without it.

Story told in my entry images is about a man called Oliver, who is a janitor in the old world. His dream was to make it to the new world and make his life better.
He idolizes the world up there, and is obsessed with the idea that the life there is so easy. But people from swamp, arent allowed up.
Luckily, one day, package drone used in the city crashed in the water. Oliver finds it and decide to return it to the city…That’s his way through Vessel, the only way up in NY.

Vessel, structure that used to be a sign of advancement, art and technology is now nothing more than a reminder of the past….For Oliver though, it was much more, it was a gate to the future, connecting the two worlds.

When he finaly reaches his life goal and gets to the city, he was amazed by the technology. He starts his new life, better one.
He couldn’t comprehend the complexity of this environment, he is a simple folk after all. The reality is, no one could. Many tried, chasing the technology advancement, but we couldn’t compete with AI.

“We stayed behind, and we shouldn’t chase for something that we cannot reach. We do things we are not built for. This world is twisted, upside down logic, where we left the things we were good at and emotions are not present. ” – last note in diary , 05.17.2041 a.d.

Irony in the story is that Oliver was chasing for something he wanted, yet it wasnt something he actualy needed.

Image 1 : Desire
“There are two worlds we are living in, i can recall the old days, now it seems like a dream. I am stuck in this swamp. I wonder what the world up there is like. I heard there are still a few of us. it must be awesome. “

Oliver spends a lot of time thinking about the “above” world. He is new era janitor, cleaning up waters under the platforms.
One day he will leave this place and visit the better one up there.

Image 2 – Struggle
Oliver found a way up through the Vessel, one of few things left to remind the old city. Oliver struggles to authorize himself, until he finds a broken drone who must have fallen from the city. He comes to return it.

“It was not easy to persuade watchers, but i found a package drone, that is my way up.”

Image 3 – Summit
Oliver reach the top! He finally did it. It seem very strange to him, because he doesn’t know how the “new stuff” works. He realizes that he doesn’t belong in this place.
Multiple mental states of Oliver captured in one picture, showing the stages from amazement, realization to regret and enlightement.

New Stories

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2040 population all around the globe is decreasing, many people have found in robots a way to improve life, public areas are now obliged to be greener, and buildings are just getting reaconditioned for a new life style.

I took the movie “I robot” as reference, same cities, same jobs, same people, but new ways to live the cities, do the jobs and share with people.

I tried to show ordinary people, living a new future.

2040: The Lessons We Have Learned

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Hey everybody! I want to thank Ronen Bekerman, Tomorrow, and all the judges for organizing this competition again. I had a blast working on this project and I’m really excited to showcase the images I created for it!

I’ve titled my collection “2040: The Lessons We Have Learned”. It wasn’t until a worldwide pandemic affected me personally, that I knew where I wanted to go with this project. I was laid off from my job due to economic issues but was lucky enough to get called to a position selling beer to-go for a local craft brewery. After a month of our taproom being closed due to quarantine, we reopened for service. It was ultimately my observations of the general public that sparked the idea for “The Lessons We’ve Learned”. The way we interact with each other has changed and I was inspired to see how that will impact us in the future. New York has been hit especially hard by Covid-19 and we keep seeing images of deserted streets and hearing news of lock-down and infection rates. I needed to show a bright future for New York City with people interacting with each other and their city. By 2040 we have learned from the events of 2020 and we implemented measures to help curb future health crises. With this in mind, I’ve shown an active city with bustling crowds and recreational activity. I placed the new automated city sanitation robots and revolutionary no-contact drone delivery in most scenes. The scenes are lively and bright suggesting better days on the horizon. I’ve done my best to give you a thriving, optimistic city twenty years in the future improved by the lessons we have learned from today.

“The Lessons We Have Learned” is also a reference to my experience working on this competition. Scale-wise, this is the largest project I’ve worked on and there were some hurdles I had to navigate. With dozens of background buildings and hundreds of assets, I had to find a way to keep myself on track and efficient. Rigid asset organization became essential to keep my view-port running smoothly and make multi matting easier. Proxying everything helped conserve RAM during rendering. I also installed an additional 64GB of RAM to my machine to cope with memory availability during render, this allowed me to efficiently work in Photoshop while rendering frames in Max. I wanted to make a fully 3D scene because I hope to come back to this project later and play with weather conditions, animations, and new views. While I have tinkered on original residential projects, I’ve definitely never designed a skyscraper from scratch. I spent a lot of time looking at photos of the existing/planned buildings for Hudson Yards and other large scale towers. Some of my buildings are completely original concepts, and some take cues from other modern architecture. I didn’t expect to have so much fun sketching out concept buildings!

I knew from the beginning that I would be creating a series of skyscrapers in the Hudson Yards neighborhood to fill out the empty blocks on the west side. We were provided with a good conceptual site plan so I used that to layout my buildings. I didn’t want to interfere with the subway depot that is currently there, so I lifted the neighborhood onto an elevated platform. I also added subway terminals, a large ramp, stairs, and sidewalk level elevators to make Hudson Yards easily accessible. I designed the new buildings so that they are distinctive, but fit in with the existing architecture and currently planned structures to make this neighborhood stand out even from a distance.

I’m proud of the work that I’ve done in the competition this year, and I hope everybody enjoys it!

Final Entry. Dawn at the Hudson Yards

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Hi!
-So the main idea of the project is the extension of the highway park.
Beautiful views from the Vessel will no longer be available after construction. Therefore, in order to increase the value of real estate, the highway park must be extended and expanded towards the Hudson River. I think this is the most likely scenario.
On the lower tier of the highway highway, I located restaurants and coffee, lounge areas and art spaces.
– All skyscrapers should make up a single architectural composition.
Unfortunately I’m not an architect, but I still imagine that they will look something like I designed.
– From an artistic point of view, I really like New York in the early morning, when fog and steam from the pipes are clearly visible. This phenomenon exists only in New York, because the city has a rather rare heating system. It is very, very beautiful! Nowhere else in the world can this be found.
I set the angles and then put materials on the buildings that fell into the frame. I did not use non-existent buildings from collections of 3D models. It was a low poly study of the real environment. The existing skyscrapers and those that I came up with I tried to work out as detailed as possible.
I hope you will like it!

Final Entry #Architecture dilemma between Investment and life qualities

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Imagining Architecture as a movie or a memory flash back, we see how the human urban development has reformed from horizontal expansion to vertical expansion pattern, as a methodology to maximize profits, and make the best use of our limited resources such as Lands (reachable-view-value-location-services) instead of the early urban Utopian cities that imagined heaven far from our life city centers, where we have less pollution and more greens, the lower building levels and higher quality life values.
In fact this is how i imagine New York in 20 years ! it’s not gonna be bad ! But not as bright, life within 20 years will not change that much but humans will keep trying to overcome the existing feeling of horizontal expansion (which is a must sooner or later to avoid congestion), taller, agile, glossy towers with connections, bridges and some of that, a life that will expand more and more vertically, to respond to our higher density withing the congested-remaining city, within its services, buildings and existing infrastructures.
On the other hand humanity will keep using our old infrastructure ! Because come on nothing changed yet ! But less light, less attention to the those old streets, less clean and unfinished works everywhere, A real contrast of old vs new life forms, different technologies but still seems familiar, like seeing nowadays an electric car, seems a normal car ! But with a closer look in sounds different it has no compositions, no drag no noise ! Its electric.
With the observatory in the middle i tried to imitate the attempt of contrast a soft new modern structure than penetrates the existing gap, the gap between the towers, it’s our way as human to breath, break the habits and make an impact, it’s our way to overcome the hardships and see through the dark ! Yet its still possible to beat the dark.
Finally, this vision may not be real, it is not positive too, and yet to know its just a theory, but due to our life today am kind of skeptical about its bright future, hope am not too dark, but with such a healthy skeptical dose towards the future we may have a brighter one, and thanks for allowing us to be in such a very ingenious and amazing challenge.
Mohamed Ahmed Mahfouz,

Hudson Yards Transit Center

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New York City seems to be great place to work and live in.
Fast growing modern business areas, more and more highly educated people.

Everything is going in right direction but there are situations, that have strong influence on our surroundings.
Beside well prosperity and inevitable development, the society is facing to the global warming issue.
Everyone try to avoid burning sun by hiding in the shadows of the skyscrapers.
All people must wear masks. Diseases are not that dangerous as it was in the past, but become common and unstoppable.

This is a realistic vision of the near future. Images are presenting society which is trying
to live their ordinary lives in extraordinary times.
Main inspiration for this images was current coronavirus epidemic.