Samsung phone market stall

I was dissapointed the first time I put my 3D animation to render took approx 10hours to render on a decent resolution of 1024 x 768 but little did i know that the avi file was being compressed hence my result, pixellated! Now I know for next time to render it uncompressed!

Despite this little mishap, my 3D still renders were satisfactory, see below

New airport in Singapore, must have a look!

Speaking of the new airport in Durban in a previous blog I read with great interest, I would like to draw peoples attention to the new airport built in Singapore, called Changi Airport.  This project I thought was brilliant incorporating nature and technology and at the same time addressing issues of sustainability!

Singapore Changi Airport Terminal 3 won a Singapore Institute of Architects (SIA) Design Award (Honourable Mention) under the industrial, transport and infrastructure projects category.


The award recognises efforts in the pursuit of architectural excellence and innovative architectural solutions, also heightening the appreciation and patronage of good architectural design. This year’s winning projects were selected by a panel of five judges, who evaluated the submissions based on points such as sustainability, elegance of construction and attention to details. Out of 157 entries, SIA handed out awards to 21 deserving projects

There’s nothing cold and sterile about the Changi Airport of Singapore, which is home to a beautiful five-story wall of vines. Located in the baggage pick-up area, this self-watering 300-meter-wide vertical wall of vegetation brings some much-needed fresh air into a large, densely populated building.

Below is a panorama from the third level, overlooking the ticketing counters on the second level. It is very spacious inside, and very bright as well because the entire building taps a lot on natural light. They have this amazing aluminium louvres on the top so they can reflect an optimum amount of sunlight into the building to save energy

And here is a photo showing the magnificient computer-controlled skylighting system! There are little peforated panels hanging under the skylights to ensure that natural light is diffused efficiently throughout the terminal

On of the most ground-breaking feat of the construction of this terminal is that they’ve fused nature and technology together, although both of them seems to be antagonistic of each other in our eyes. They’ve got this 300m long Green Wall with 25 species of creepers on it, to provide temperature moderation and a breath of fresh air for arriving tourists

And back to the entrance of the airport, you’re greeting with greeny palms and crystal clear glass panels! The designers took into account clarity as part of the terminal’s design – to make as little visual obstruction as possible by using high tensile strength, tamper-resistance glass panels. The total gross floor area of the terminal can over 63 football fields, even though the entire structure only sit on a site of 10 football fields.

Samsung Phone stall

My final design had a LCD screen added to the front display, which wasn't evident in my previous conceptual design.
Here are my 3D's below:

Behold thy renderings of interior space

Here are my lighting renders, i found myself spending quite a bit of time with the downlighters and daylight scene, found them to be quite tricky!  But i think i came up with a decent result, what do you think?

Sustainable design project

This project is for our Studio work module, one of the biggest and major projects for our first semester of our course.  It is quite a challenge indeed juggling time spent working on it to other projects which are not so major but still takes up time. 
The project consists of designing a sustainable research centre situated on a site to the west of the NMMU plot, to the left of the Architecture/Library building.  The whole centre would comprise of 2 lecture venues of different sizes, research centres specific to wind, solar and water energy. 

Carefull placement of the centre of the building is critical, issues such as axes, paths leading from the university, existing parking areas and courtyard spaces.  Weather and climate factors all need to be addressed when deciding on the placement of the centre.

My strategy was to place my lecturing and academic facilities to the east of the site bordering the folliage of trees to the existing courtyard for passive cooling purposes.  I wanted to venture into container buildings as my precedent study for my project as they have proven to be very sustainable and cheap.  Some very inovative configurations exist out there, i wanted something not standard, like just brick walls or concrete, but a mix-play of masonry, steel and metals.  With container buildings they can be considered much lighter than sheer mass concrete and is more cost effective and can be delivered to the site as a pod ready made, hence construction time is also limited.
I wanted to place all my research centres off the ground, on the first floor level for maximum exposure to the elements of the surrounding climate, being situated in a coastal region, making full use of the strong prevailing South Westerly and South Easterly winds.  In addition the solar research centre will not be sheltered from any sun striking the site, therefore maximum sun exposure and absorption leading to 'free' energy.

Below are some of my concepts that i wish to implement in my building that i have investigated:

Then ended up with more or less a concept design which i'm in the process of refinement:

Phone stall

For our latest construction and detailing projects, we were required to design and detail a phone stall.  It would be solely used for marketing purposes either a telecommunication network or a particular brand of phone.  The challenges we were presented were that we had to use up to 80% aluminium, other parts could be made of steel for example, but the use of different materials had to be carefully chosen with particular attention to the detailed connections.

For my stall, i chose Samsung as my target brand of choice.  Very slick and slender designs most of the time, linear in forms.  Often mechanisms used for the phones included sliding and folding as compared to the conventional block form.  Hence in the form of my stall i opted to incorporate all three forms into my stall. 

Firstly the vertical members would simulate the sliding, and within that frame, another scissor-like effect members.  To secure the whole structure, the final form, just use of two planes to stabilize the structure.  I used a combination of aluminium frames which are filleted at the ends and hollow on the inside with aluminium mesh composition with appropriate branding done in stainless steel for a more refined and elegant look.

See below for my concept sketches and my thought process through my project, including my 3D visualizations of the product.  At this stage in my design i'm experimenting with different colour schemes and adding technology into the stall e.g. an LCD screen or speakers to name a few.

Here are my 3D's below:

stay tuned for my details! =D

Gate house

On Friday 12th Marc, we had a hand in for our construction and detailing project, which was to design and detail a gatehouse.  The site i chose is situated in urban park, Uitenhage.

My design consisted of a regular box-like structure for the actual gatehouse with rivenstone cladding in certain areas accentuating areas of openings such as doors and windows or where a window wasn't there, was the secuity boom box.  The front main window of the gatehouse is unsupported therfore not limiting any views of incoming traffic approaching the gatehouse.  Successful angle of slope of screed allow the water collected from the roof to flow down into the duct and into a water storage tank which can be used as 'grey water' to flush toilets.  The duct is closed up with a timber lath screen.

In addition, the roof was to be consisting of gum poles constructed and put together in a butterfly roof profile.  The actual gatehouse would then seem to slip beneath this roof structure with timber laths covering the gum pole frame.  The gum pole rafters are held up by stainless steel cables fixed to purpose made brackets connected to the gum pole horizontal members.

The entrance and exit gates which are motorised by 'Centurion' motor, is a galvanized mild steel frame with timber laths tied with rope to the gate.  See some 3D renderings of my proposed gate house.

South East view

North West view

Front view of gatehouse

View of approach