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.

Bellevue Beach – Wellness Center

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The site is located north of Copenhagen, Denmark. It is a a beautiful building from the 1930’s, originally designed by the renowned Danish architect Arne Jacobsen.

I believe that restorations or repurposing of existing buildings is a very subtle art, it is important to come up with a concept that will both respect the original design and add some well deserved functionality to it. This is why many of the changes done are carefully fitted within the existing layout, with no major changes to the structure and the essence of the building itself. Luckily for me, the interior of the building was mostly empty, so organizing the space once I figured out what I envisioned was relatively easy. The exterior is in part restored to it’s original form or very similar to what it was; white panels with thin gaps and white metal windows, but this time I used the modules and the rhythm to create “frames” that emphasize the surrounding landscape (most notably the massive frame facing the sea, where the yoga/meditation practices would take place). As a final touch and to highlight the purpose of the new building, I kept the original standing clock and restored it, but removed the needles. There is also a number of small support modules along the beach that go together with the main building, these are also restored and modified to fit the new criteria and aesthetic, using the “frame” shape as the tying element of the group.

This is an area that people already use a lot for activities related to contemplation, meditation, and appreciation of the landscape. Since I thought this is an excellent aspect to focus and promote (specially after such a grueling last year for tons of people) designing a multi-purpose-wellness-focused building seemed like a sensible approach.

For the creation of this project I used geodata from the Danish government to create a landscape mesh in 3ds Max, then I modeled the rough shapes of the buildings and started sculpting the details. I used Unreal Engine 4.26 as my main tool for visualization, so my workflow was mainly modeling in 3ds Max, then texturing using the Substance Suite (I have to say I’m shocked how easy and intuitive it was to use, specially Alchemist to make textures like the sand, which I made merging many pictures I took on site), and then straight to Unreal. Most of the assets on the scene I modeled and textured from scratch, save a few ones, like the Quixel rocks at the shore and some other nature assets.

ANIMATION LINK

https://sendgb.com/1hTnZv9RcMj

REAL TIME LINK

https://sendgb.com/Z5Y3hp8urLS

REAL TIME Pre recorded footage LINK

https://sendgb.com/l9T87e2diOb

FADE INTO THE HOPE MORNING

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PERSONAL DIARY BY JOEL WILLIAMS
June 18th, 2044. Before leaving.
Hudson Yards, New York.

The day started by letting me see a pale but visible sun; I already want to walk through the Metropolis and see under the light of the rays the happy face it will make.
I will take advantage of this “outside day” by buying a NS2 from Ellie, there are more purchases ahead and I have to replace my mask that now seems completely obsolete, like the many I have discarded…
I call my atte

DIGITAL CHRONICLE.
Hudson Yard, New York. June 18th, 2054.
By Greta Thunberg

The change is articulated in two variants: the first one, the appearance of “uncertainty”; For society as we knew it, a phenomenon called the Coriolis effect detonated it, which meant for our planet the decrease in the rotation of its winds, accelerating climate change, concentrating enormous amounts of pollution, which had been generated through years by humanity and coupled with toxic air clouds, affecting agriculture, living beings, worsening respiratory diseases and thereby affecting millions of people in the world.
The second variant, that I consider the most important “the action”. Due to the multiple problems resulting from this abrupt climate change (in my opinion, a consequence of our inaction in the past), today and thanks to the efforts of all people, the “REINICENT” program is launched, which involves the construction of powerful air in the architecture of the Metropolis and the erection of new hybrid buildings capable of symbiosis with the environment, generating its own oxygen and giving space to self-consumption agriculture, thanks to its structure and technology implemented in these buildings.
We also have NS3s, prepared since their launch to improve people’s quality of life by optimizing a functional society, which have been the tool to maintain the infrastructure of millions of people.
Even with all of this, it is clear that we still have a long way to go, but there is a very close light for all of us, for all of humanity …

PERSONAL DIARY BY ELLIE WILLIAMS
June 18th, 2054. The end and the beginning.

I haven’t done this in a while…
But to this day, for many years, I feel really free. With great nostalgia I remember him, because in a day like today he gave me my first NS2, I remember well the emotion and happiness I felt, ironic, it would be the only thing I would interact with for a long time, and now I give one to my daughter; But things are very different, we are different, after difficult times then came years of reflection on past and future actions, so many things to change but we are already one step further. Life as we knew it change from being able to go out a little we never went out, from being able to see people to only seeing automata, from consuming the unnecessary to fighting for the necessary, from generating waste without control, to controlling waste to procure the environment , and all this as we knew it came to an end once again…
Today I came out and glimpsed the result of what we call SIMBIOTEC (Symbiosis between Environment, Technology and Humanity),
It is the new beginning…
The intense green of the trees touches my pupils, The air with its purity breezes fill me, Now I have faith, in what I never had, the hope of a better tomorrow …

In between the GAP

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Imagine the concept will be built (Yay!!) and would have to complete by 2040. If we break the 20 years period into 4, we could have a moment every 5 years to capture each milestone for the project.

From one to four, these images, namely: the gallery, the construct, the deadline and the awaken, will lead you by 5 years-step to each future stage of an imaginable-process in order to give birth the ARM concept.

From the very first time of publishing initial ideas of the design, to the middle of the construction process, then the big-deadline-night when the last puzzle is assembled until the early morning that opening-sign is used to welcome its very first explorers!

I hope you will enjoy the journey as I did and I look forward to the near future, even the physical structure won’t exist, the message of a better day is still worth spreading.

You and I, we might not be sure about how the far future could look like, but I do believe that in the next 20 years or so, what humanity really need is connections, physically and mentally.

As in the meantime, we are being separated from each other for a global health crisis; unintentionally, we have to widen the distance between our loved ones and us. And when I say loved ones it does cover not only the persons that you want to meet but the things that you enjoy to do. So I guess soon we will get through this and rising again, but the question is How do we fill in the gap that we will be facing? Do we really need to push our buildings higher or bigger in the coming years? What could become a linking factor that fills the void between towers and towers, windows and windows, eyes and eyes?

The proposal for my entry is “the ARM”.

If we take Hudson Yards as a frontline in terms of recovering post-crisis problems, we could see the Edge (10 & 30 Hudson Yards), the Equinox ( 15 Hudson Yards), the 35, the 55 and the 50 Hudson Yards proudly stand beside each other, but without a connection between their massive structure. On the city skyline, visually “the ARM” will unite all these giants as they are hugging each other and, physically mirroring the city’s famous “High-line” from the bottom to the top of those towers, closing the loop of urban connection network where it usually ends when we reach to the roof level.

——————————————————–

Thank you!
Very best wishes to all of us!

Duy Phan

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,