Renovation WIP

[Trapezium]

Went out and took some photos of this house in San Francisco a month or so ago. I started building it from scratch a few weeks ago in my spare time. Still a few details to add but you can get the general idea. I'm attempting to finish off a few more of the surrounding buildings (much less custom UV mapping ) , get some good renders at that stage and then renovate the old thing and render from the same cameras. This is all personal work and I was just hoping to get some critiques and suggestions as I try to finish it up.





For all you design gurus out there... What should I look into for renovation options? Materials? Techniques? Anything innovative and modern would be fun to do. If nothing else, I'll probably just give it a nice paint job, new gates (if any) and rebuild the first floor.

Thanks,
--Jon

[natty]

... some great texture work there Jon and a very nicely detailed model.

I would go for a nice paint job and some new windows..
looks great

[cocolas]

yeah it's looking great Jon

love the texture work/lighting detail in the modeling ....can't wait to see the rest of the contest bulidings....


as for the renovation....I would leave the general look/widow setup and corinice the same....it's got a nice style to it that's quite typical of San Fran, so I think that should stay ...the part I would redo is the ground floor depending on what would go in there.....an idea would be maybe a coffee shop...so you could have most widows on that ground floor that wrap around where the street starts to go up, maybe windows up till that white paneling on the side where the street goes up.
You could even add a nice canvas canopy above large widows and some sitting and coffee table outside on the sidewalk where it's flat....don't know just some thoughts.....you could really get crazy with it
And as Natty said, a new paint job would be a nice touch too

just some thoughts

paul.

[RErender]

nice work jon, I love those textures. I agree other than just some new paint nothing really jumps out at me for changing the design.

[armilla]

Great work Jon. Love those textures. I keep meaning to get round to doing a nice gritty job of some derelict buildings. It would make a pleasant change from doing pristine renders for architects and developers - more of a challenge texturally.

In terms of the renovation, if you want to do something more adventurous, you could add a cool steel and glass penthouse to the roof. That's what developers usually do in renovation projects here in the UK. Don't make it too obvious though, set it back quite a bit so you just catch a glimpse of it - it'd be a shame to ruin such a nice building with anything too major. A coffee shop on the ground floor, spilling out onto the pavement is a great idea, and would definitely breath new life into it.

I love the architecture of San Fran, it's well up there on my destination wishlist. Keep us posted with updates.

[geoff]

Not really got anything extra to add
Excellent texturing.
I wouldn't alter the buildings exterior too much as it does look cool.
The coffee shop is a bit obvious?
Those iron gates look arty
How about a designer furniture shop or a gallery?

Just a thought

Geoff

[paulison]

nice stuff!

Id be tempted to keep those iron gates or re-use them someway in the interior as cladding or something. Same with the exteriors, id maybee reuse the existing styles and funk it up a bit. Like put some panelling and exposed steel/ timber louvres kind of deal mixing some high tech with whatever style this is (art deco?). Id keep key elements like those turrets? on the corners. really cool project!!!

at the moment the building is a bit all over the shop in terms of materials...probably had several renovations done. Id probably try and simplify the sytles and material usage down into two very distinct styles so the contrast is made as strong as possible. Maybee strip the building down to the ORIGINAL elements, then work from there - can you get historical photo's?

Still im just a graduate architect who doesnt actually design anything...just one opinion though which i hope gives a couple of (vague) ideas

[Trapezium]

Hey thanks for all the great input

I'm almost finished with the large texturing on it and have gotten a little burned out on mapping for now so I'm going to try and bust out all the surrounding modeling then come back to finishing the primary building before I jump to renovations. I may have to revisit the site in a few weeks if I want to get good textures on the other structures but I'll probably opt for something more stylized and just say it was for focal purposes

I like all of these ideas and have had some disjointed versions of some but no experience to solidify them into anything good. It will definitely get a new paint job. Hopefully I'll be able to choose a palette that not only works with itself but fits the culture and environment also.

I couldn't decide if I wanted to add a store but I see there was probably one in the past and I really like this idea now. the coffee shop may be the best choice due to the fact that it's in the Haight/ Ashbury area and I think it would be the most forgiving with its design. I like the gallery too though... hmmmmm.

armilla: Integrating a penthouse may be a little daunting with my lack of experience. I could see myself scrapping allot of ideas but I'll have to think about that one as it could add another level figuratively and literally. Do you know of any reference pics you could direct me too?

paulison: Good ideas and I want to keep them in mind when designing the interior of the shop. When you say exposed steel/ timber louvers I picture something with metal slats but then I'm thinking log cabin. I would be really interested if you had any reference too. I've probably seen something like this but just can't picture it clearly.

Yeah the architecture is very interesting and extremely mixed all over San Fran. Just down the street is a row of houses in this style which looks almost German to me.



Thanks again, glad you were able to overlook all the areas I haven't touched yet and give some great ideas to work towards. Technically there are quite a few things bugging me that I should be able to clean up near the end but who knows when that will be with other things I've got going on. Will keep posting the progress though.

--Jon

[armilla]

Jon, I'm pretty busy at the moment, with a deadline looming, but doesn't sound like you're in too much of a hurry, so I'll try and dig out a few reference images over the next few days.

Andrew.

[Trapezium]

No rush at all and thanks in advance

--Jon

[jacksc02]

I like what you've done here Jon. I have recently visited San Francisco and I fell in love with the city.
I think if your looking to redevelop this building you could add another level on top for a penthouse type apartment. I will find some references for you to show you what sort of addition I am thinking of. Or maybe we could design something together?

Nice image BTW

[Trapezium]

Hey Chris, thanks Let me think about that while I finish this stage of the project and I'll get back to you.

--Jon

[trivision3d]

Great texture work.....and nice lightning!

Looks very realistic

gr.

Maarten

[Trapezium]

Hey thanks Marten, I will post an update soon.

I've currently brought my home system (1Ghz, 1GB RAM) to its knees with textures and AA so I'm going to have to rework it a little to finish it with allot of post but it's getting there.

--Jon

[Trapezium]

Here is my last update from a while back but I've had to put this to the side for now. Maybe I'll be able to afford a new machine before I start back on it again.



--Jon