The Phoenix – Final Entry

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Here is my final entry for “The Phoenix”. This challenge was ofcourse one of the most different and interesting ones I have taken up since it involves designing and visualizing both the old and the new converted structure. The new design revolves around not stripping the ruins of its historic image but at the same time breathing new life into it. The journey that the Smiths are going to step into here on has been depicted in few of the design elements used. To create an interest to the subject, I leave it to the viewer’s imagination to find the connection between the old and the new. Hope you all like it!

Forsaken (final images)

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Forsaken final images (converted challenge project)
High res images:https://we.tl/t-AhTkZkOarW
While I was trying to think about how I’m going to convert my building to something new, I thought about pretty much everything, and I came up with the idea of an actual agricultural centre, as I mentioned before there is no agricultural centre where I live. So I merged this Idea and the new Idea of vertical farming in my building and I used its huge amount of roofed space for providing sunlight for the plants and crops inside. I removed the roof of the building which was made out of concrete and had no structural role in the building and replaced it with a transparent roof. Since this was going to be a research centre I decided to use the environmental spaces as well and planted as much greenery as I could including tea leaves (you can see them in the first image). And looking at some small researches I made on new technologies in agriculture, I noticed that they use drones to control the farms and even use them to spray all over their crops (you can also see the drone, one on top of the building and one airborne)

Making a water flow through the fields was necessary, so I used some tricks on cinema 4d to replicate whatever was in my mind.
The whole complex has two main buildings, one on the side and the other is the main place of research and farming (I used the building attached to the main structure for a small staff office, for disinfection and lockers) the building on the side is dedicated to offices and study labs)
Coming to interior place other than the platforms I made to hold more plants and crops and gain more space, I also designed rounded stands and scattered some grass and greenery on them, you can also see small pools and water flowing in the interior image. I was talking about technology, also added robotic arms to harvest the beans and crops from both high and ground platforms.
Soft wares and plugins I used: Cinema 4d, corona renderer, speed tree, substance source materials, substance designer, substance painter, Forester and real flow.
That was pretty much everything I did in this project I spent so much time on the idea and what I was going to do with my building, and these are the results, I learned a lot during this process including substance suite and etc. it definitely improved me and was quite challenging for me and the most important I met beautiful designers and people in this community, I will share all my projects here in the future.
Best regards
Erfan

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,

Architecture dilemma between Investment and life qualities

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Architecture has developed through the ages, especially after the world war-2 when we discovered ourselves as Urban communities that, war was no longer useful for us, from that point human started a new era, of being a bit more civilized than ever before, in terms of resources utilization and life qualities.
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 Newyork 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,

G.Asplund’s Library visualization by Anna Cholan

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This competition was very interesting experience for me. The more I learned about the library, the more I
understood how much it overcome. Its architecture shows how important knowledge is in our lives.

When I felt architecture I want to combine its majesty with urban ordinary life. Thus, on the exterior visualization
we can see the light of the rising sun which illuminates the house of knowledge.

For the bustle of everyday life, we forget about the important things that shaped us. We must remember that
without knowledge we would not be today and never will be tomorrow.

vägg åka : wall ride

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My process is to first imagine one’s
narrative while inhabiting a space.
I observe materiality, character or space, location, program, and activity levels. Then I project unique perspectives from imagined characters that potentially would inhabit the space. What qualities the space has and what sort of mood an image should project are informed through this imagined walkabout.
Next I dig in to how someone might directly interact with the space and create a scene setting narrative. In this case is the character an architecture student walking to class carrying modeling supplies, or something a bit more intriguing? What time of day will daylight accentuate architectural tectonics, or project a certain mood? What is the weather? How might that interaction change or shape the experience a visitor has of the place?
For this challenge image I decided to explore though the eyes of a crew of friends visiting one evening to collect and experience urban snowboard footage.
This narrative informed me about nature of the activity for the image. An urban snowboarding photo shoot, the rider would be either directly interacting with the building or using the handrail as a less direct assault on the architecture. The activity would need to take place at night. One hundred percent artificial and controlled lighting. What color of lighting would best accent not only the snowboarder but play with the architecture to give the shot a heightened level of dramatics? I played around with blues, greens, and purples but a saturated pink fill light gave the scene a carnival atmosphere and complimented the warmth of the corten facade. The use of three spotlights positioned in a way that the snowboarder’s path would be illuminated and defined from approach, to maneuver, to landing. The spot lights being positioned accented the steel window frames that give this facade depth.
I enjoying poking at architecture and visualizations in this way. Drawing from my own experiences and projecting imagined ones onto a built or natural environment to better understand a place or a space. I grew up snowboarding in the mountains and foothills of Utah in the American West. My friends and I would always be looking for places to jump off of and park benches to slide on. This project has been a fantastic exercise of really examining the mechanics of a photo shoot set within a beautiful architectural setting. How people interact and shape the architecture, as unexpected as that may be, is where I think architecture gets its’ value. By thinking through the eyes of a person visiting or experiencing the space I can begin to create atmospheres and narratives that will then inform design decisions and create more compelling visuals. Images that when viewed display an atmosphere and give a viewer a feeling of what it means to be in the scene.
I had difficulties with the snow, getting it modeled and displayed took a few iterations. I had never attempted that before, but with the help of the internet I came to a solution. In addition the lighting and activity within the building kept presenting problems. Too much light and my eye was drawn away from the action. Too little and the composition suffered.
If I was to redo this project, I would focus on the detailed modeling of props, form a better understanding of where and how snow would stack up in a storm event, and perhaps include some activity within the building. Even if it was just a lone cleaning person going about their work as the action unfolded outside. It seems like every project is never truely finished. There is alway room for tweaks, and having presented and discussed this image with friends there are a range of suggestions or opinions about how to better represent my wishes. Reaching out to others was a great way to zoom out and refocus on elements I had missed. Working in a collaborative enviroment on a project like this would be fascinating and I imagine the final product would be much stronger with an office of minds and talent collaborating on a direction.
Thank you for the opportunity Tomorrow, and to Ronen Beckerman for really making this project visible. It has been a great process for personal growth and brought up some new and exciting problems to be solved. I hope that I might be able to bring my experience, passion to work and learn alongside the team at Tomorrow on many future projects.

Warm regards,
E.