Week 1

This is a picture of the Floating Hallelujah Mountains in Zhangjiajie National Forest Park, China. Its amazing panorama is what inspired the set of the epic film Avatar. Its sense of weightlessness is what inspired me to create actual floating mountain blocks for my scenery. For a more magical effect, I have added a purple tinge to the ocean colour.

Draft Lumion Environment 2

Draft Lumion Environment 2

Draft Lumion Environment 1

Draft Lumion Environment 1

Final Submission Lumion

This is the front view of my final monument. After playing around with Lumion, I managed to manipulate the water into looking like blood by adjusting the sun height. Although this is not directly related to my concept, I thought this would go nicely with Lebbeus Woods' "war and architecture" notion. This is also echoed in the "splatter" texture on the floating sphere next to the waterfall. 

To evoke a sense of weightlessness and defying gravity for my visitors, I decided to include a 'floating' glass platform and two spiral staircases made out of glass treads so that it gives them the illusion of walking on air.  You can see that while my overall design is simple, all components have combined to create something complex and gravity-defying; literally and even sensually. 

This is a side view of my monument at sunset. Here you can see all three applied textures clearly. While I applied a light "retro" texture to the part on the left, I made a slight change to it by overlaying some areas with glass. Those areas of course, were where the pattern originally was. I thought this will reflect the simplicity and purity of SANAA furthermore. 

Simple front view of my monument.

This is the top view of my monument. While aesthetically it doesn't show much, I wanted to show how the shadow will connect the two staircases as the sun changes its height. This connection reflects a fluidity of space between the two monuments (an original concept of SANAA).

This is a night shot of my monument, however I wanted to draw focus on the stairs. The double-helix metal plates that encircle my staircase is an attempt to emulate the random steel rods that intersect each other in Lebbeus Wood's previous works (eg. Earthwave in Los Angeles). This also reflects the complexity that resulted from the combination of two simple spirals.

Sketchup Model: https://plus.google.com/114535318965161905748/posts/NLGrfruVxcT

Dropbox: https://www.dropbox.com/sh/mffnax4q85woqmk/Au-FjZheVN

36 Different Textures-Light to Dark

From left to right: Inception, Ripple, Retro, Waterfall, Sakura, Splatter

Here are my 36 light-to-dark textures. After importing my model into Lumion, I realised the curved side sloping downwards to the floating disc/sphere is kind of like a waterfall so I tried to emulate that in my 4th texture. Following that would be my 6th texture as the "water" splatters onto the floating disc/sphere.

Since my concept is to defy expectations by combing simple ideas to create complexity, I decided to use mainly textures that appear "light" (even if they're not in their respective transition).
The three that I have chosen are:

Retro 1

Ripple 4

Splatter 6