BRUTALIST NATURE

CASA TO

The Hotel Casa TO located in Puerto Escondido, Oaxaca, Mexico, is a project by architect Ludwig Godefroy.

I wanted to recreate this work because I was attracted by the composition of the spaces, which together with the materiality transmit a brutalist atmosphere where nature and raw elements inhabit every corner of this work from the exterior to the interior. The challenge I took up was to transmit the calm that I perceived in the photographs that I analyzed in detail. There, I understood the spaces, the materiality, and its constructive systems.

I faced many challenges building the 3D model setting up the lighting of the scenes and creating materials. One of the biggest challenges was to create the vines as I wanted them, I did several tests and, in the end, I decided that the best solution was to create the branches with a script and make an automatic distribution with forest lite and then manually adjust the geometries.

Casa TO is a masterful design based on the composition of forms that mimic the letters T and O. It is easy to find these letters in the facades and spaces that compose it. 

Light and vegetation subtly invade the areas and paint their surfaces green.

T  O

My renders within my last render!

These places composed of Ts and Os create plays of light throughout the day and constantly transform the scenery. Recreating the actual lighting conditions was a great challenge I faced with rigorous photographic analysis to understand how light invades these fascinating environments.

My workflow

I started with the collection of information about this project. Since the plans were not sufficiently detailed, I had to rely on all the photographs I could find, I organized the spaces to understand their design by parts and I selected the scenarios that I liked the most. From there, I started the 3d modeling.

After modeling the basic geometry of the hotel, I tried different lighting configurations and, created basic materials to simulate how it could look in the end. After defining the lighting in each scenario, I concentrated on creating the best materials for each one.

One of the biggest challenges for me during the whole project was the concrete. After trying different options, I decided to create an image that would allow me to mask two equal materials but one darker than the other. This image was created in Photoshop from the displacement map to be a contrast image that would create stains on the material combined with a blend, as shown in the image.

When I had the model ready with lights and textures, I organized the assets in a separate file to place them according to each scene.

Relativity

"Relativity" made by M.C. Escher in 1953, a 70 years old image with many interesting stories.

I recreated this painting in 3D Max with the intention of being as faithful as possible to the perspective and proportion of each element. The challenge was very interesting and allowed me to explore new tools like perspective match.

In the world of Relativity, there are three gravity wells, each inhabitant lives in one of the gravity wells. The shape defined by the three main staircases is a famous "impossible shape" called the Penrose triangle...

The Penrose triangle is an impossible object that was created in 1934 by the Swedish artist Oscar Reutersvärd.

The human scales or figures are not modeled by me, they are downloaded and placed in the model. 

I would like to thank my school for all the commitment that has taken us further and further. Thank you very much Butic The New School and my teachers for their support.

And thanks to you for making it this far. I really appreciate that!