5/16-5/21 | Humble Beginnings

TLDR

I have been learning Autodesk Revit as well as Enscape to design a dream house. I am working on sketching out many ideas before focusing on one specific design. I will also be getting in contact with two Catlin parents, Clive Knights and Darren Schroeder, as well as Skylab, Allied Works, and Holst to gain a deeper understanding of the business and development of large-scale projects.

General

The purpose of this senior project is to be immersed within architecture. It's a field that I have always been interested in and have wanted to explore but have never found the appropriate environment and amount of time. This project also speaks to a dream that I have had for quite some time to be able to design my own house exactly the way I want it.

Within this project, I will research and learn how to use all the necessary programs and software required to create a full architectural project, brainstorm ideas for my house, pursue a refined sketch for the layout and look, translate it to a three-dimensional model complete with measurements, floor plans, and elevation maps, render the house in a realistic environment with realistic shading, and ultimately walk throughout the house using room-scale virtual reality. Along the way, I hope to discuss my project with local architects and architecture firms, though this may be dependent on COVID regulations.

All my work, apart from the building files (which require the appropriate software to be viewed), will be uploaded to a shared Google Drive folder with separate subfolders for each week. In this post, I will go over my research in software, my inspiration and brainstorming imageboards, and local architects and architecture firms I hope to get in touch with.

Software

The "Building Information Modeling" software (or BIM) is where the entire architectural project will be developed. There are many capable programs available but I will be using Autodesk's Revit. I was able to get it for free by being a student which is great because it's $2.5k. Revit allows add-on programs for external rendering since its internal rendering engine is not the most realistic. I ended up choosing Enscape mainly because it is intuitive to handle, provides great assets, renders very realistic images, and supports my HTC Vive room-scale VR setup. Similar to Revit, I was able to download Enscape for free as a student.

Much of my time so far has been dedicated to actually learning this software. I am not exactly familiar with CAD (computer-aided design) but have used Blender quite a bit, which is a 3D modeling program mainly used for artistic stills and animation. All the notes I have taken regarding Revit are within the Week 1 folder. This is some of the important information that I have learned so far.

Enscape feeds directly from Revit, meaning that changes made within the Revit project are updated real-time in the Enscape rendering engine. In Enscape, I can change the time of day, background, cloud formations, and camera perspective. Enscape allows me to render a still image, a panorama, a 360 image (with or without depth), and a 3D environment suitable for VR.

Sample Revit project rendered within Enscape

As you can see, the renders are incredibly impressive, and I have been able to explore this sample project with my VR headset, so I am very excited to see what my house looks like through this engine once I finish designing it.

Revit is made specifically for architecture, meaning that you place walls within a floor plan, and the height of those walls corresponds to the elevation plans and the levels within them. Components such as doors and windows can be placed in the walls themselves. Walls, windows, and doors can be customized for specific thicknesses, materials, and dimensions even after having been placed. Model building elements such as floors and ceilings are placed below and above the walls, and other components such as lighting fixtures and furniture, are added to the elements using a grid pattern.

Revit provides three primary views: 3D, floor, and elevation. Modifications made in one will update automatically to the rest.

Floor plan view of sample Revit project

Inspiration

Through this project, I am hoping to uncover more about myself. I believe that my aesthetic and design language will showcase my values in life, what I consider important and essential, and what I can live without. In short, I am pursuing a more minimalistic style using rich materials such as wood, concrete, dark metal, glass, and stone. I am heavily influenced by Scandinavian design for its simple and practical aesthetic. I am also intentionally designing a smaller house, though not as small as a tiny house, for example. I believe that less is always more and am interested in exploring exactly what I need in my house versus what would be redundant or intrusive.

I made an inspiration imageboard covering this specific style. I will continue to add to it the more I develop my ideas. Here are some examples of structures that I am drawing inspiration from:

Sketches

I have dedicated one of my sketchbooks to roughly outlining ideas and designs. I have also created a sketch imageboard in the same Google Drive folder.

Here are some examples of sketches so far:

Architects and Architecture Firms

Though this is an independent project, I hope to interview local professionals in this field to learn more about the industry as well as the process of actually designing a house or building for a client.

There are two Catlin parents that I will contact to schedule a meeting sometime during the middle of my project: Clive Knights and Darren Schroeder. By the time I meet with them, I should hopefully have part of my house to show. There are also three local architecture firms, though I will research more, that I would like to get in touch with: Skylab, Allied Works (which was actually the firm that designed Catlin's Creative Arts Center), and Holst.

Overall, I am very excited for this project and hope to learn a lot from the experience!