DESIGN | BUILDING GROUNDS

First page of grounds development

For the first time in this blog, there’s sketchbook work! I wasn’t expecting to be using it much when I first started, seeing as this is almost entirely a 3D and rendering based brief I’ve given myself, but I did have to design the surrounding ‘grounds’ for the building – and for that, sketching is incredibly useful.

For the grounds, I wanted something simple but elegant that would fit in with the rest of the design style, as well as providing extra visual interest and framing the building.

Thumbnailing of potential shots, as well as some door designs and lamp-posts that didn’t make it

I experimented with a number of different solutions, such as having the building is a large recessed pit, but felt this would be hard to frame and would make the building seem smaller – I wanted the building to appear large and impressive.

The designs began to become more refined here – closing in on something I liked

I ended up deciding to go for a ‘plinth’ design – with the building elevated from the ground on a floral-shaped platform ascended to by large curved stairs. This echoed and reinforced the lotus inspiration for the design.

Designing the pools and petal platform in more detail – with the even wider area around this considered

With this basic idea defined, I then began to consider the area in closer detail – focusing on smaller and/or more particular aspects that might be included. I really liked the idea of continuing the petal forms below – using a raised pool that could contain water lillies and lotuses (furthering the connection even still) and act as seating.

Further elements explored was how to add some more detail to the form of the petals – in the bottom right sketch above I looked at adding a detail along the front and bottom edges that would be in line with the recurring forms in the building proper.

I experimented with other ways of including water in the scene – such as this combination of previous designs which looks out onto a much larger pool

The main drive for the pools was that I really wanted to try my hand at rendering water in the project – and the water lotus connection proved good justification for this.

Door designs and an alternate design for the scrapped ‘large pool’ idea

In the next post, I’ll get onto the modelling process for this outer area – after which, the modelling stage of the project is completed!