The regeneration of the Ethnographic Museum

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After a lot of shaping and texturing, the thing seems to take on a presentable image.

Both the conception and the design of the new building express not only the need for the emergence of a ”new” concept, but also the warmth of living souls in the area of ​​influence covered by it. The history of decades of historical and cultural development of a people is also felt in the space, hence the need to design buildings with details whose stories penetrate the soul.
I would like to work more in the surroundings, but I’m out of time. I preferred to use daylight because it is very easy to be calculated by the Pc and presents more realistic results besides the city being characteristically defined by a more tropical climate, the daytime images express this more. I really like the sketch effect, so I used the Photoshop filter to get a similar effect.

I hope that one day the museum will undergo an architectural intervention, be it rehabilitation, remodeling or restoration, as it preserves much of the history of Mozambique, especially the culture of the northern region, adorned in its tiny artifacts and exquisite in the eyes of the people of Nampula.

I am immensely grateful to the organizers of the challenge, it is the first time that I have participated in something similar, and the experience was very good, with more to come.
Good luck to everyone!

Culture Lab

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The 3 images tell the story of breathing life into the old, experencing the new and a moment in time. It would be a really great if this historical gem is put to use again as a centre of knowledge for the youth and that is what prompted the building choice. The different scenes have have a different feel and story, reflecting the environment, scenery and users.

The first image captures a wet evening in June right in the thick of rainy season. The rain just drizzled to a stop, just in time for sunset as it settles on the horizon underneath dark rain clouds washing the sky in rich hues of violet. My inspiration for this scene is a hobby i have of photographing sunset and the unique feel of a sunset just after the rain is what i wanted to recreate.

The second image is at dawn, the city wakes to a cloudless warm tropical sunrise. People dashing to work, the project is in a relatively quiet area for city centre and the render is visualises a quiet morning. I have walked this location in the early hours of the day and noted how serene it felt even though is located in the Central Business district, and that feeling was what i was inspired by.

The last image is what i hope to see in future, a young lady reading in the late afternoon sun of her heritage and learning new ways of thinking and doing things. We are in need of idea incubators and spaces to grow and learn more about our history, this scene is more of a hopeful future where this becomes a reality.

Gunnar Asplund Library

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TOMORROW CHALLENGE 2019 – STOCKHOLM PUBLIC LIBRARY – GUNNAR ASPLUND, ARCHITECT
SUMMARY OF PROJECT:
This was an interesting and difficult project. The knowledge that I gained through experimentation and advice from colleagues made it a worthwhile endeavor regardless of outcome. After reading about the subject matter and investigating the building, I found that the building and setting presented a number of interesting and thought-provoking challenges.
The fact that the library is in a densely urbanized environment abutted by a park with a reflecting pond immediately indicated to me that the majority of the exterior renderings that would be submitted would be shot from one location, arguably the most attractive, being across the pond and looking up towards the building. Indeed, Gunnar Asplund’s own renderings of the building feature a shot from this angle.
The building also features numerous retail establishments along its main street face, and I am of the opinion that while utilitarian, they would distract from the visual impact of the final image if featured with too much detail.
I wanted to present something that would stand out as well as tackle the challenge of rendering the site from a bird’s eye view while adhering to the stylistic guidelines of a more realistic aesthetic.
This effort proved to be more difficult than I first imagined! The masses of buildings in the near vicinity made it difficult to decide how to depict the surroundings without using the tried-and-true “white block buildings” that are most often utilized for context in large-scale architectural renderings.
I approached this challenge from several angles. My first thoughts were to use photogrammetry of the surrounding area to create a “real mesh” from the surrounding buildings. This was a big effort, requiring the compilation and rendering of several hundred aerial images to form the final model.
I was not happy with the outcome of this attempt, and while I learned from this, I would not attempt it again, as the final mesh file was huge and when rendered revealed too many of the imperfections of the photgrammetric process. The mesh looked too lumpy and organic to be of any real use.
What’s more, the sheer size of the base model when imported into Sketchup and the fact that the software decided to smooth all of the surfaces made editing the model and applying texture a time-consuming and difficult process. I also had to prioritize, as time was not going to allow for a full rendering of the interior with its millions of books, unusual shapes and high-relief textures. I finally found a reference image of the main entry shot from inside the rotunda that I found had sufficient tension and material variability to serve as a basis for a shot from the inside.
In the end, I am grateful to have been given an opportunity to participate in this process and would like to thank Ronen for hosting yet another interesting and educational challenge. These challenges force me to look at new methodologies and techniques to attempt to submit something on-par with the exemplary work of my fellow competitors.

SHANNON MCVEY

CABINS / Mario Mendieta : Final Render Cabins Challenge/Loneliness

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With nature as a backdrop and a spart, yet funcional cabin layout, this scenic composition epitomizes the essence of the outdoor living experience at its best. Through a careful material curation, that strives for textures as well as colors, in order to age harmoniously with it’s surroundings. In time, the rust, mosses, ferns, along with the layered patina create a cohesiveness that makes the man made structures belong. As trees envelops the inmmediate vicinity, the scenery convey an air of serene tranquility that speaks to the cathartic longing for solitude. That yearning to extricate ourselves from the hectic modern living and revert to our roots in nature as the only means to find our true selves.