Weekly report

South-West elevation of the Coledale House

For our group's fabrication project, I believe that we should attempt the Coledale House by Kennedy Associates Architects. Firstly this design is a viable choice as it is a decent sized residence which means that the model would be a manageable size to work on as a opposed to a triple storey mansion. The design itself is quite interesting with a split level whereby the garage is separated from the rest of the house.

Diagram of the environmental considerations of the design

The design of the bush residence has taken care of so many environmental considerations. Kennedy Associates have utilised all methods for creating a thermally passive dwelling. For example they have sunk the living level into the ground instead of raising it to the road level, which helps to regulate the internal temperature, as well as providing a huge amount of privacy. Coledale house also has aspects of solar passive design with the roof slope and glazing are arranged in a manner which allows for the winter sun to penetrate whilst restricting the harsh summer sun. In order to reduce the carbon footprint of the building, the roof is mostly covered by a garden which means that any plants possibly displaced by the construction of the residence would be made up for on the roof! Also on the roof is an array of photovoltaic cells which power the home.

In terms of aesthetic qualities, the design has some possible Glenn Murcutt influences with the use of corrugated iron as a building skin and the way the building mass sits as part of the landscape instead of hugely altering the topography of the site. A bonus for this design is the amount of information available on the design whereby the linked pdf contains a floor plan, sections and elevations which would help us determine the layout and make scaling the model easier. Both of these reasons mean that we can spend more time modelling internal features and the surrounding environment!

Structural model of the house

After exploring the UT3 engine, I found that it can produce spectacular graphics through a mixture of dynamic lighting and high quality textures. I feel that since this project is not some giant structure, that we too could produce high quality textures in order to improve the user’s experience in the map. From the elevations, it would appear that we’d have to create a highly detailed corrugated iron texture as it covers most of the house. Perhaps in the interest of lower polygon counts to reduce lag, we would create a bump map to give the corrugated appearance instead of physically modelling the corrugations.

Screen shot from UT3 demonstrating the amazing graphic ability

In terms of creating an audio environment, we would need to create or locate sounds which would be present in the Australian coastal bushland. Some possible sounds to include in the final model would be some distant ocean sounds as well as some native birds and eucalypt leaves rustling in the wind.

Here's a video I dug up on YouTube of someone who's attempted what we are undertaking, except they used the older UT2004 engine. It's a pretty amazing little video



It's a pretty amazing little video which concerns me about how we'll cope with UVW map unwrapping as I have done it in Maya but not 3Ds Max!