Visual References

Since the last post in this blog I have been looking for visual and storytelling references into social networks such as Vimeo or Youtube. 

After spending hours searching trough internet, I have found many different ways to narrate an architecture video depending on the rhythm of the video, the amount of shots in it or movement of the camera. Therefore, before choosing how I want to create my narrative video I do have to take many things into consider.

References 

Directing CG architectural movies - tutorial teaser 2 from 3Devotion on Vimeo.


Directing CG architectural movies - tutorial teaser 1 from 3Devotion on Vimeo.


Crystal CG Architecture from Crystal CG on Vimeo.


Villa Cologny Architecture Visualization from Studio Aiko on Vimeo.

Farnsworth House - CG Texturing

Barcelona's Pavilion UVS

Foliage CG Test

Barcelona's Pavilion Sketches

Autocad - 2D Plans 

3DS Max - CG

UV (II)

After quadrangulating the mesh we reduced the faces and polygons from 5.000 to 2.000 what it means that our rendering will be needing less computer resources and less time.

UV (I)

Once I have modelled Fransworth's House with 3D Studio Max, I have sent it to Maya to quadrangulate the mesh of the building for a better texturing. The reason why I have done that is because working with quadrangles makes less faces, less computation needs and better UV texturing placement.

Fransworth's House Sketches

Alongside with the theoretical work of the project I have been doing the first sketches of the Fransworth house in CG.

Autocad - 2D Plans

3ds Max - CG

German Modernism & Bauhaus Influences

Typhography

The Bauhaus typeface design is based on Herbert Bayer's 1925 experimental Universal typeface. It is made by simple geometric shapes and monotone stroke weights that has the aim to represent the simplicity of the Bauhaus movement. Some of the typeface's that belong into this style are:

• Blippo
• Bauhaus 93
• ITC Ronda
• ITC Bauhaus

Fine Art

With the appearance of the photography the aim of the fine art changed completely and turned into a non-stopping search to find new ways to express art. New tendencies of art such as expressionism or surrealism became important and changed completely the concept of art that it was before.

• Expressionism: The aim of this style is to present the world solely from a subjective perspective, distorting it radically for emotional effect in order to evoke moods or ideas. Expressionist artists sought to express meaning or emotional experience rather than physical reality.

• Dadaism: The Dadaist poem used to be a succession of words and sounds so difficult to find logic. It was distinguished by an inclination towards uncertainty and absurdity. It also had a general trend of rebellion and destruction due they were against literary and artistic conventions. Therefore, they were rejecting the conventions of bourgeois society that they considered selfish and apathetic.

Introducing Bauhaus

Bauhaus was the name of a school in Germany that combined all the arts. It was famous for the design that it was published and taught from 1919 to 1933.

The Bauhaus school was founded by Walter Gropius in Weimar. Despite the fact that its founder was an architect, the Bauhaus did not have an architecture department during the first years of its existence. Nonetheless it was founded with the idea of changing all arts, including in it architecture. The Bauhaus style became one of the most influential currents in Modernist architecture and modern design and had a profound influence upon subsequent developments in art, architecture, graphic design, interior design, industrial design, and typography.

The school existed in three German cities (Weimar from 1919 to 1925, Dessau from 1925 to 1932 and Berlin from 1932 to 1933), under three different architect-directors: Walter Gropius from 1919 to 1928, Hannes Meyer from 1928 to 1930 and Ludwig Mies Van Der Rohe from 1930 until 1933, when the school was closed by its own leadership under pressure from the Nazi regime.

The changes of venue and leadership resulted in a constant shifting of focus, technique, instructors, and politics. 

Starting Briefing

Introducing Mies Van Der Rohe

"Wikipedia" - Ludwig Mies van der Rohe (born Maria Ludwig Michael Mies; March 27, 1886 – August 19, 1969) was a German-American architect. He is commonly referred to, and was addressed, as Mies, his surname. He served as the last director of Berlin's Bauhaus, and then headed the department of architecture, Illinois Institute of Technology in Chicago, where he developed the Second Chicago School. Along with Le Corbusier, Alvar Aalto, and Frank Lloyd Wright, he is widely regarded as one of the pioneering masters of modern architecture.

Mies, like many of his post-World War I contemporaries, sought to establish a new architectural style that could represent modern times just as Classical and Gothic did for their own eras. He created an influential twentieth century architectural style, stated with extreme clarity and simplicity. His mature buildings made use of modern materials such as industrial steel and plate glass to define interior spaces. He strove toward an architecture with a minimal framework of structural order balanced against the implied freedom of free-flowing open space. He called his buildings "skin and bones" architecture. He sought a rational approach that would guide the creative process of architectural design, but he was always concerned with expressing the spirit of the modern era. He is often associated with his quotation of the aphorisms, "less is more" and "God is in the details".

Why Mies Van Der Rohe's work?

Mies pursued an ambitious lifelong mission to create a new architectural language. He applied a disciplined design process using rational thought to achieve his spiritual goals. He believed that the configuration and arrangement of every architectural element, particularly including the character of enclosed space, must contribute to a unified expression. Therefore, Mies' architecture was guided by principles of the abstraction.

Every aspect of his architecture, from overall concept to the smallest detail, supports his effort to express the modern age. The depth of meaning conveyed by his work, beyond its aesthetic qualities, has drawn many contemporary philosophers and theoretical thinkers to continue to further explore and speculate about his architecture.

Mies Van Der Rohe's buildings to CG

To be honest, it is quite difficult to choose four different buildings to work with from him due his amount of good work he had done in his lifelong work. However, I have chosen some of the most relevant work of him to work with in my video.

Farnsworth House

Pavilion Barcelona

Tugendhat House

Crown Hall