Rewilding Sizewell Nuclear Power Station – FINAL images

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Summary

Sizewell Nuclear Power Station is located within an ‘Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty’ in Suffolk, UK. There are 3 reactors – “A” has been decommissioned, “B” is operational and “C” is currently planned for the future. I propose to convert all buildings and site into a series of spaces where visitors can learn about rewilding and explore the importance of maintaining Biodiversity on our small planet.

The site is very large so I decided to focus on two main aspects. The first was an area of land immediately to the West of the main buildings where I proposed to re-wild the area by introducing large herbivores and allowing nature to take its path.

To help support and encourage wildlife, I introduced a lake by flooding some of the existing waterways. Around the lake I’ve designed some animal hides based on collage studies I did early in the process. It is here that visitors can join a “Sizewell Safari”group to observe the animals in nature.
My second area of focus was to create a new dramatic entrance to what is now the turbine hall of Sizewell B. This is where visitors will be able to learn about rewilding, biodiversity and book their Safari tickets.

Substance

This was my first use of the Substance suite and I found using Substance Designer made the material creation process fun. I’ve been able to create various bespoke, procedural materials with exposed parameters that have allowed me to re-use the same .sbsar in multiple places.
The most ambitious exploration for me was to create the lake Substance. Using only 1 external input (a hand drawn black & white shape in Photoshop) I was able to create complex displacement, diffuse colour and roughness. In addition I generated various bespoke, editable output masks, that I used as maps to drive Forest Pack Pro. This allowed me to easily explore plant layout options and species distribution by simply adjusting the exposed parameters.
I also managed to create a procedural timber material that was used for all of the timber – the entrance canopy structure and shading fins, the main staircase and the animal hides cladding.
The turbine hall cladding and context buildings also share the same Substance.
Using Substance Alchemist I managed to create new materials very quickly from texture maps I already had – mostly for the hard landscaping.

Photography

All of the animal photos used in the images were taken by myself.
The existing site “Sizewell B” is an active Nuclear Power Station and is therefore secure and hard to access. I therefore had to look online for reference photos. The best ones of the existing site I found were some incredible aerial photos taken by John D Fielding on Flickr. He kindly allowed me to use some of them as reference images.
Boston United Football Club aerial image - their new Jakemans Community Stadium - Lincolnshire UK

Interior reference of the turbine hall used to model the existing structure was from a promotional video on YouTube called “Take a tour of Sizewell B nuclear power station”.

DOWNLOAD LINK TO FINAL IMAGES:
https://we.tl/t-n1KyWAJABH

Reinterpretation of The Western Yards

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Reinterpretation of The Western Yards was designed to reflect changes in architecture which may occur in the nearest 20 years. I make an assumption that completing of Hudson West will be postponed due to current crisis in the world, so I put accent on technological progress which could happen during this time. Admiring such amazing buildings under construction as 53W53, 111W57, One57, 9 DeKalb Avenue, Tower Fifth, The Spiral, and 2 World Trade Center I suppose West Yards will introduce even more daring and unique solutions in architecture.
My task here is to show influence of the most appealing, in my opinion, trends of architecture of tomorrow. I highlighted three of such trends: passenger drones as an evolutionary development of the public transportation system; sky bridges as the way to build public spaces as well as the amenities for residential buildings; kinetic structures or their elements as the possibility to accommodate buildings to certain conditions and future demands.
I consider The Related Companies L.P. to be as competent as nobody else to calculate demand for office and living spaces for the city. I am going to follow numbers of 4 mil GSF of residential and 2 mil GSF of office spaces as well as one school provided in press release.
At the beginning of 19th century some artists envisaged New York to be crowded with towers linked by elevated walkways and flying machines roaming around. Even though this vision never came to be, the significant demand for space in urban areas, led to reimagining concept of sky-bridges. Inspired by such projects as American Copper Buildings on Manhattan and Raffles City Chongqing I wanted to reflect potential of sky-bridges in creating public spaces and range of amenities for residential buildings. To elevate this concept even more I put a school in between two residential towers above the ground level to free more space for sport facilities.
The way I see, the most significant change in architecture will be caused by the birth of drone public transportation system. Though it could sound a bit as Sci-Fi concept, right now Uber is testing necessary technologies for their Uber Elevate program which is planned to be launched in 2023. Today it is called Uber Copter, which is a group of helipads around Manhattan, one of which is situated right in front of Hudson West. To estimate demand for such flying machines I conducted some calculations and found that 10-12 landing fields in the office building will be enough and from 2 to 8 for residential buildings depending on their size. The result of these calculations was illustrated in renderings. Moreover, instead of many landing fields The Vortex building utilizes drone conveyor. Those buildings which wasn’t able to build landing fields for some reasons, still have the opportunity to use drone station at former heliport place.
There are just a few kinetic buildings all over the world. They differ from common buildings in their ability to accommodate to different conditions and their extended capacities. The most recent built is The Shed at Hudson Yards. This masterpiece of architecture was designed to be responsive and adaptable. I got inspiration from this structure and chose to expand this concept in central building of my project The Crystal. It provides habitats with unique park at the height of 170m which can be either opened or closed depending on weather conditions.
To put just a few words about technical process – my main goal was to illustrate the influence of three advanced trends on architecture of tomorrow. I put accent on composition, color and lightning, skipping large amount of background modeling work.

Atlantis 2040

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GOALS

My main goal when creating images of NYC of 2040 was to create attractive and imagination arousing vision. At the same time I asked myself: ‘what can I offer to people from the future to make their lives better, considering the fact that man is moving further away from the nature he comes from, being in conflict with her, occupying larger and larger areas for development and arable fields. Currently, cultivated fields occupy an area the size of South America. This foreign to nature, artificial environment has been created and developed for several thousand years. Process of transition from nomadism to settlement and food production began about 10,000 BC. Agriculture has led us to the place where we are now, place where industrialized agriculture can produce more than enough food to meet the needs of the world population (assuming equal availability and no waste), which currently stands at around 7.6 billion. Despite the important role agriculture has played in human history, has created many problems over the years.
Cutting down forests, creating space for arable land, man has largely deformed the environment. The heavily reduced number of forests reduced carbon absorption capacity of our planet, at the same time we extract it from the ground and burn it, releasing quickly into the carbon cycle resources removed from it by nature for tens and hundreds of millions of years. With industrialization, development of communication and food preservation technology, distance between source and recipient has increased dramatically, and ties between cities and food production has weakened. For many years there was a conviction that food production and the idea of clean, hygienic and modern cities are mutually exclusive. Local production has disappeared and agriculture has become oriented towards global markets. Food is often transported to consumers from thousands of kilometers away, generating large amounts of CO2. Pesticides and fertilizers that can cause water and soil pollution are another environmental risk. In addition, agriculture is estimated to account for 70% of the world’s drinking water consumption

SOLUTION

What is the solution to make life of citizens better and reduce the ecological footprint of human activity? The answer can be network of vertical farms that refers to the concept of agrourbanism (including the Garden City of Ebenezer Howard), whose main postulate was to bring together the natural and urban environment in order to create an eco-city. The project assumes creating a network of farms producing food on the existing urban green as well as degraded areas.
The essence of this project is the production of food based on a closed- loop production, analogical to cycles occurring within the biosphere, which rely on the circulation of elements. These cycles have no beginning and no end, all elements are in constant motion, changes their form, but their sum is unchanged in time, because in nature there is no waste. Just like the cycles that we can observe in nature, the closed-loop of food production should re-use all raw materials, including municipal waste. All farms forming a coherent production network have been connected by a monorail suspended above the street level, which, alongside passenger transport, provides freight transport. Good communication makes raw materials, products and waste constantly in motion, and farms complement each other, creating one dynamically functioning organism.
Designed production facilities are the basic source of supply of agricultural products for citizens. We already know the most important technologies for the success of this vision. We know the hydroponic and aeroponic method needed to grow plants in multi-storey structures. According to estimates, one unit of internal surface supported by appropriate technologies is able to produce as much food as 10-20 outdoor units cultivated in a traditional way. In addition to economic and pro-environmental functions, agritecture is an undeniable social value. Public gardens will encourage the creation of local communities with strong ties. Positive reorganization of social life will help to unlock the potential of the inhabitants. The level of education will increase, and consumers will turn into co-creators.

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.