Brooklyn Digital Foundry Helps out OMA

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!