Chopin International Music Centre

/in , , , , , /by

Location: Żelazowa Wola, Poland

Project year: 2018

Lead Architects: Jakub Figel, Filip Kurasz

Team: Karolina Jankowska, Jakub Tajer

Acoustics: Arau Acustica – Higini Arau, Jordi Oliver / www.arauacustica.com

Visualizations:  ©  ELEMENT / http://welcometoelement.com

Żelazowa Wola is a small village in Poland, well-known as a birthplace of a famous polish compositor and pianist – Fryderyk Chopin. The picturesque scenery of endless forest favors leisure activities and relaxation. Tourists from all over the world gather here to honor Fryderyk Chopin.

Landscape of Żelazowa Wola connotes with peaceful country site with wide fields and all-embracing nature. It inspired architects to design a building which will correspond with this unique scenery.

Architects proposed the concept of new International Music Centre, which was designed to blend into the nature. The whole Centre integrates with the park by set of composition openings and view connections with the Fryderyk Chopin’s birth house. While walking through the park the only transparency is provided through the lower part of the trees – trunks. Treetops are covering the view with its broad sizes. This dependence was an inspiration to design a half-divided façade of the building. Light plinth and solid top. The lower part was covered with glass and mirror panels to let the building sink in greenery. The wooden planks, placed on the upper part of the façade, were made by using old Japanese Shou Sugi Ban technique. This burnt up wood is durable and resistant to pests, simultaneously being highly aesthetic.

Natural material refers to historical wooden Mazovia cottage architecture taking into account architectural traditions of the region. For example, traditional gable roof is interpreted in the modern way by diagonally placed ridgepole. All solutions aimed to prove that not the building is the most important thing in this particular location, but the nature itself.

The main entrance to the building is kept in the old manor style referring to the Fryderyk Chopin’s XIX century house. Pathways and bridges near the building are designed to connect the site with existing park. It encourages visitors to walk through area and experience unification with whole park set.
The Concert Hall was designed in collaboration with Arrau Acustica. The volume has 7500m3 and can house 600 viewers and 100 musicians. The shape of the Hall was designed to provide the best acoustic conditions. Glazed wall behind the scene is emphasizing the beautiful context and allows visitors to have a direct view on the park, which becomes a constantly changing scenery.

The building is physically and functionally divided into three blocks to provide functional clarity of the plan and to diffuse one big mass into three smaller parts. This provides desired views of the park and suitable insolation.

First and main part is a Concert Hall connected with all necessary functions and welcoming area with double-floor foyer, ticket desk, cloakrooms and cafeteria with leisure space. Second block contains Chamber Hall, practice rooms for musicians and offices whereas in the third block are designed conference, education and guest rooms. Second and third block are connected with chamber foyer and restaurant space. Three blocks are linked with glazed corridor which provides the unique scenery from the back side of the building.

Lake Lugano House

/in , , , , , /by

I first came across the Lake Lugano House when I saw the visuals done by James Pickford back in 2012. I had never worked on an exterior scene before so decided to have a crack at it myself.

I found some plan views of the house online and recreated them in AutoCAD to import into 3ds max. Using these and various reference images I was able to model the entire house and surrounding area. I rendered the initial visuals using forest pack and vray and having only worked on it during my lunch breaks it took me a couple of months.

I recently found those visuals when cleaning out my hard drive and decided they needed revisiting. I cleaned up the entire model and mapped everything properly. I added a new lighting setup, recreated all the materials and updated all the forest objects. I was also fortunate enough to find a high res panorama image of Lake Lugano itself which is a massive feature of the final images.

It took me about a month to complete, again working on it during my lunch hour every now and then. The final images were rendered using vray with a fair bit of post in photoshop.

COUNTRY HOUSE

/in , , , /by

This image was made for the purpose of testing procedural ecosystems.

At the same time I wanted to convey the idea that the strong lines and the dark colors of the brutalist architecture can blend well with the chromatic scale of the typical Mediterranean forest.

The building and the ground were modeled in 3ds MAX; the lawn, the trees and the gravel have been inserted using Forest Pack.

The lighting was done with the use of a high resolution HDRI and sunlight; the lights were filtered with a slight fog effect.

The images were rendered with Corona, the lightmix option to adjust the contrast between HDRI and sunlight was very useful.

Lake House

/in , , , /by

The house is planned to be a 1 level construction and the main desire is to catch the views from the lake, in order to achieve that, the site was needed to be elevated approximately 9 feet above the initial level. The materials and finishes in this project are mainly from the area and a certain balance is always taken in consideration. High ceilings, open spaces and great views are few of the qualities of the house.

Country Home V2

/in , , , , , /by

Country Home V2 is an R&D project I embarked on personally. It is a revisit of an old project we did last year (View old scene here). I decided to recreate the scenes of the project and so placed the design in a more natural environment. The environment was influenced by one of NMachine’s projects – LM Guest House. The simple design of the home alongside the mood of the renders was one to greatly admire and I sought to recreate that sort of ambiance and realism.

The project was worked on in my free time between commercial projects and like I prefer doing, I emphasized on creating a full CGI environment. I have listed links to the resources I used in this simulation.

Country Home V2 project was rendered in Corona, an amazingly forward thinking renderer. It made my workflow almost seamless and I never had to worry about tweaking render settings or what’s not.