It was good , because I was always doing different kinds of work; from residential renovations to acreage homes, and from retail boutiques to industrial buildings. I discovered very quickly that architecture was quite polarized between design and pragmatism; with pragmatism driven almost entirely by the parameters of budget. Worse still, at least for me; all the things I was interested in from a design and critical thinking perspective, seemed to be completely sublimated by this dichotomy. Design time was supposed to be constrained to the 15% of time I was allotted by the book.
One day, I realized that I had become Howard Roark. ( For those who don't know, see The Fountainhead on Wikipedia, or better yet, read the book.) I found myself doing design for free. Rather than arguing about a need to explore the alternatives, I would spend late nights working after everyone else had gone home. I would fix plans, elevations, and sections, because it was the only way I knew to keep myself sane and not screaming in frustration at my boss or the client. I lost track of the number of times I heard the remark,' I'm amazed that you were able to sort that out'. I wasn't a genius in design; the piles of crumpled up tracing paper under my desk were a simple testament to the relentlessness of my process. I just kept drawing until things worked.
I knew something had to change, I just wasn't sure what.
Shortly after this, I moved back to Toronto and went to work at the last firm for which I would ever hand draft. At a design conference, I met a salesman who was promoting the latest version of a DOS based 3D modelling programme called 3D Studio - the forerunner to 3D Studio Max. I was able to persuade him to give me a copy as a beta tester, and between that, and my first copy of Photoshop, my conceptual world took a giant leap forward.
2012 - Photoshop study of high density architectural forms. Making conceptual architecture becomes easy when you are allowed to forego structure and gravity, but it has been these kinds of explorations that started to evolve my sensibilities about high rise projects. Simply put; extruding a floor plate vertically was no longer enough. My experiences at Arcosanti 20 years before were resurfacing to meld with my new understandings of an urban architecture.
2012 - Condominium lobby structure and color study - Default Renderer in 3D Studio Max
2013 - Material study for subway platform in game project. Default renderer with GI in 3D Studio Max
all images in this blog are copyright vertigo studios and michael knudsen
2013 - Material study for subway platform in game project. Default renderer with GI in 3D Studio Max
all images in this blog are copyright vertigo studios and michael knudsen
