Brooklyn Digital Foundry Helps out OMA

oma.jpg

I’ve always loved the field of architectural visualization. Traditionally, archviz has been dominated by static 2D and 3D representations of proposed structures, but it’s increasingly pushing things into the fourth dimension, as can be seen in this project from Brooklyn Digital Foundry for The Office for Metropolitan Architecture. (For the uninitiated, OMA is the studio of world renowned architect and theorist Rem Koolhaas.)

The video starts off a little dull and rough around the edges, but about halfway through, things start to get interesting. The motion tracked composites are a nice touch that really help bring the building to life. I love that they show the structure as it would be seen from street-level a couple blocks away from the building site. Instead of a towering portrait of glory bathed in golden sunlight, we are presented with what looks to be a home video of the building-to-be. Very personable, very believable.

While it’s not strictly related to mograph at the moment, archviz will increasingly benefit from the expertise of motion designers, if only to help make better choices about dynamic typography. (The city of Chicago is a mecca for architecture, but as a typeface, it’s decidedly shit.)

I once looked into careers in archviz and quickly discovered that it’s very helpful (maybe even crucial) to already have a degree in architecture before going down that path. Have any of you worked on architectural visualization projects? If so, in what capacity?

Thanks once again to Seth!

About the author

Justin Cone

/ justincone.com
Together with Carlos El Asmar, Justin co-founded Motionographer, F5 and The Motion Awards. He currently lives in Austin, Texas with is wife, son and fluffball of a dog. Before taking on Motionographer full-time, Justin worked in various capacities at Psyop, NBC-Universal, Apple, Adobe and SCAD.

8 Comments

Eric

yeah, nice find. I’ve been searching for this thing for a few months now. I was at the Ali Center opening and saw it right after that. Thanks for locating this.

t.toe

that is one (or is it several) ugly building(s).

ba-ba-black-sheep

i love architecture, i also enjoy jazz and assortment of cheese from all corners of the world, and i love wine. I have an extensive collection of music.
As a designer, i find architecture to be very similar to graphic design. Half my book library is on famous architects. It inspires me while i listen to my Bang & Olufsen custom designed (by someone famous in the acoustic comunity) audio system as i paint abstarct art in my New York studio late at night.

This is a great find.

Eric

no silly, the ali center is right next to this and i was really excited to see it. I guess it’s pretty funny after reading it again but i didn’t mean it to come off like that. haha back to eating some cheese i have to flip the turnstyle over.

historyisaweapon

I actually liked the beginning better when the people were sitting at the table and the colored blocks were flipping around.

jo3

just would like to point out, this piece is about a year old, if not more. the beginning is very rem, the rational method for making architecture. without the beginning the rest would seem kind of meaningless.

something every architecture student should aspire to.

Dwaynne

nice, but rough. note the lck of reflections in the water at the end…from dusk all the way thru to night. A minor detail, and certainly something I could only dream of doing. Kudos to the developers.

Douglas

More on the project (it is the 3rd that Ramus talks about in the lecture).

https://www.ted.com/tedtalks/tedtalksplayer.cfm?key=j_prince_ramus

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