 Right, so my name is Demeter and I'll be speaking about architecture concept design It's something that I'm quite passionate about Just a little bit of information about me. I'm an architect that's been using Blender since 2007 I work currently as an architecture designer at HOK in London and I also do a Lot of architecture education tutorials on my YouTube channel, which is youtube.com slash UH Studio So a little bit about my company HOK. It's a global design firm with offices throughout US, London Middle East and Asia and we mostly do large and complex projects We're working across many typologies So arenas, airports, churches, cultural buildings The Air and Space Museum in Washington DC, the Smithsonian is also HOKs So that's a little bit about me and how can Blender be used within architectural design. That's a question I've been interested in probably since I started using Blender So one of the ways to we all know is architectural visualization. These are some of my examples You can clearly see that's not what I do all day every day But what I'm more interested in is Blender as a design tool So let's take a step back Let's look at architecture and the kind of tools that we use typically for design So we have explicit modeling tools Some of them are concept modeling tools like SketchUp and Rhino and some of them are more production oriented like like Revit and ArchiCat On the other hand we have parametric modeling tools like Grasshopper, Dynamo and also scripting Languages that plug in nicely with all the different packages So the parametric tools they talk pretty well with their explicit modeling tools counterparts So Grasshopper with Rhino, Dynamo with Revit and so on and ArchiCat with actually Grasshopper But what I'm more interested in is this space in the middle between explicit modeling and between parametric design How can that space be used? How can software within those sort of have the ease of use as an explicit modeling But with some with some of the inherent complexity that we get with parametric modeling tools So as an example here is in Rhino how we create something simple, right? We have a cube or sort of a cube We have two lines that we start we create a planar surface in between them and then we extrude The issue is if we want to change the cube I can turn on the vertices and move some elements around But at some point I'm going to break The object and I'm going to have to rebuild it from scratch from the bottom up On the other hand we have tools like Grasshopper which allow us to be very precise create exactly what we want and Have a lot of control trouble is to create this really nice catch that you see here only in 2d this is the amount of scripting that we need and I consider myself a fairly advanced Grasshopper user, but it still takes a bit of time And that's because we basically have to reinvent the wheel every time every Operation like offset move trim is represented in one of those nodes So thinking about that space in between again, what what kind of software within architectural design is there? That sort of fills that nice gap between explicit and more parametric or procedural modeling So Maya believe it or not is actually one It's quite used within some circles of architectural design and he has the history So it sort of remembers all the history so you can modify a cube quite late into the process We even though it's one of the first operations that you've done on the other hand We have Katia, which is one of the most Successful cat and 3d nerf softwares usually used for aeronautics aviation Transportation industries, but they're investing a lot to get their architectural tool set on par and similar like my even though it's cat based he has full history So let's say you start with a sketch of a line at some point You when you extrude the sketch you offset you bully and remove some elements You can go back to the original sketch and remove and adjust something everything that follows adjusts after We also have free cat, which is an open source sort of sketching based a sketch based nerfs modeler Which I'm starting to use It also has full history. It's not as advanced as Katia is but he has some excellent startings Which especially if you're an architectural designer recommend to try it and then we also have blender So with blender doesn't have history like the other tools do at least this far But as we all know as we've seen in a series of the presentations in this conference There's the modifier based approach is significant For example, if we go back to this example and try to do something similar in blender It's actually a piece of cake. So I start with a cube. I Only leave one part of it. I mirror it along the x-axis and then I rate That a hundred and twenty degrees twice based on an empty I know the sudden we have something in which we can only work a six on a six to the project to get something fairly complex Then with loop cuts we can continue to refine it later. So this approach allows us to work in architecture fairly quickly So now I want to tell a little bit of my story. So again, I as I mentioned earlier, I started using a blender when I was a student in Philadelphia and in fact That guy over there see this thing is working It's actually me with a bandana and long hair But the rest of the images they actually for my postgraduate course in London, which is at the architecture association Design research lab and in it It's a mostly computational design course where we get to all kinds of different software how to use them Maya processing grasshopper Python Java C sharp we get exposed to a lot of things. It's a year and a half course So we although we get exposed there isn't a lot of time to actually go in full depth without it so what what I particularly liked in that course was Maya and In particular Simulations doing then with nucleus dynamics. So some of the examples like the one on the top right hand corner For example, we did a lot of simulations digital ones and then physical and the physical one sort of informed the materiality and something That we couldn't quite understand but near the end of the course. I sort of Step back a little bit and I remembered about blender Again, and what I realized is blender can actually do a sub diff modeling You know, I knew about the concept before but not to the level that I was taught in this program so It's it's hard to talk about sub diff modeling and architecture without talking about the UK based architectural studio code Zaha Hadid design Those of us that model with polis and sub diff would clearly recognize some of the way that some of these shapes have been formed We start with something rough. We add some edge loops and they do all theirs in Maya And then we take it usually into grasshopper and refine them further to allow Penalization structure windows penetrations to actually happen So a friend of mine and a colleague of mine actually at work had the idea because I do tutorials But they're fairly simple. He said I want to I want to see you do something complex Let's see show me your chops in a way. So I thought this would be a proof of concept of sort of attracting the audience that's Typically uses Maya or is interested in sub diff based Architectural modeling into blender. So this is another Zaha project that I remodeled It's called the Grand Rabat theater in Rabat, Morocco And I got a series of reference photos. I matched some of the camera angles in my Model and then I modeled it away. So that's sort of the final result Again, those of you the probably model cars can do this in your sleep. That's the best I can do but in regards to Explaining the architecture the curve the sort of growth from it from from this swing and going up and becoming the shape That it actually is almost like a fish. I think it's done a good job So now I want to talk a little bit about how you use Blender in the office So I'm lucky enough to be able to use Blender professionally alongside Rhino most of the time So besides modeling we do use it for representation as well We have something that we call the game of Jones style one of my directors. His name is John and we wanted to do Images like the opening sequence in Game of Thrones Probably less greedy. We didn't want to sell images to people that think they're gonna go there and die But we think that at the same time, you know having something it's still quite conceptual Yet it has a little bit of texture richness that adds to the image if anything and we think that's important to move away from these Materialist hidden line renderings that we do so often At some cases it's it's okay to describe diagrams, but we want to show something a bit more physical We think of it. It was also almost as a scale copy of a physical mono We also do normal visualizations every once in a while This is an arena in Valencia, which is currently in the final stages of design And it's going to get built fairly soon Down there and that's our view. It's all these are all done with Blender This is another arena in Barcelona that we won and this is all done in blender And the models come from all different kinds of places And these were actually very fun to do another arena. So I used to work in Sports and entertainment for quite a bit of time. I also do mixed-use residential Done aviation projects as well So so these are done in Blender internal, which I thought was absolutely great for architectural diagrams And it's a section of a arena in yas actually currently in construction And Modifiers were very useful in here All the structure was done by a basic shape that we have the triangulate modified the wireframe in the array modifier to get our large trusses the The auditorium the seating actually came in from Rhino and now I'm going to talk a little bit more about how I use blender as a Design to win the office This was a competition entry for a tram stop in the middle of a busy road in the Middle East And it was meant to be a very sculptural object something that you can see from quite far away In that sense you can sort of understand this if you're moving fast on one side or in the other You just want to see something kind of beautiful in sculpture And that's sort of where the intention from the form came in in between those two columns in the top right hand the series of Columns, that's where you have your Stairs that gave to bring you on the ground for people to actually come and experience this So this was all modeled in blender sub-diff and then we 3d printed it in the office My favorite typology is theaters And this is a theater proposal we did for a council in England and it's a it's a proscenium civic theater with 1500,000 seats, so these are the typical kinds of theaters that you would have really nice performances in I Love teachers because they're quite civic in nature, right? This is in the center of town There's a lot of public functions in between the sort of theater space here and the public realm in this side So in this case the interior was modeled in blender a very simple sub-diff modeling yet at the same point Quite easy to get exactly what we need because when we design within architecture when we move any single point It actually has ramifications It's similar to what was mentioned in the first day that we sort of built our own worlds, right? When we design architecture is very similar We build our own world and we have to understand what those design rules are to make this a successful or successful place in this case The ceiling and this is sort of a finished rendering of it from a different company So the ceiling needed to perform architecturally as well It needs to look beautiful, but it needs to be curved curved and In order for sound to not bounce too awkwardly We also have the bands on top which are for lights to come through Over here and then we have to make sure that all the people that are sitting outside of the balconies They have a good view out as well So it's a few things to consider in something in terms regards to modeling is fairly simple But in regards to architecture, it is not and I also want to mention a little bit about the images finished images in Architecture many times we don't have the time to work in in-house to create beautiful images So we'll work with a lot of external companies to help us with the visualization This one was done by wire collective the director is actually a friend of mine who's up here as well We met because of Linda So to continue this is a portal an outdoor space and the idea behind it is that we have a fixed Structure for events to occur, but it could be open for people to pass through if you imagine that sort of blue stage layer Disappearing. Oh, this was completely done in blender. Again, if you look at the trusses, they're very simple It's a it's a box. It's a plane with edge loops There we have a Triangulate modifier wireframe modifier and then a ray modifier And if you look at the series of different structures that are happening across that top structural bit all of them are modeled in a similar manner The light and the rake as well. So we have something fairly complex that render allows us to produce in a fairly easy manner So this was one of those 11th hour competitions for an airport Basically the one of the directors on the project came to me two two hours before the project was due And he said we're doing an airport. We need a roof. We need to come up with something Fine, let's see what we can do here So we started with the module. We knew the idea was I needed to design the module a little bit in such a way That's it's easy to arrange both directions. So then we have a series of modifiers We have a modifier in the x direction once we have an array modifier in the y direction once And then a third array modifier that brings the whole thing out Then that's followed by a lattice modifier that sort of picks it up And then we have a second lattice modifier that locally deforms it as you can see in some of those elements And we're left with something that again, this is done by a third visualizing company We have something that starts to suggest Architectural space and atmosphere This is a cultural master plan in a part of London. We're looking for Suggestions to the council. It's on a site with an existing theater And we're thinking if we make this in a cultural and entertainment master plan, what can we put there? So in this case, we're looking at extending the existing theater or creating a new theater And creating a black box for larger events and an existing outdoor space All these some of the geometry came from Reiner some of it was modeled simply in blender And you know, it's very simple everything is parented to the massing So when we move something around, we just take a screenshot of rendering and then we have a new option Also in these kinds of scenes I use particles to put people they're quite abstract We don't have the typical architecture detail that allows us to understand scale like doors and windows So people help significantly and these have used by using particles to put them in hours since also help This is a bit more detailed study So we do a lot of assaats for our buildings as well This is for competition and it's a diagram and it's using the wonderful plug-in that the center's been working on tissue So we have a series of groups here that modify the depth of any of these Triangulated panels that come out the idea is that based on the solar studies that we're doing some of these can be Can pop out more and some of them actually blend in with the rest of the facade up higher And here's another a series of different oscillations again using tissue These were studies for a facade pattern for an arena So we have the same base mesh in all three options in which we're just using a different panel to understand that And this is with regular modifiers You can imagine one of the modules. It's a rate along the x-axis and then we use the footprint of The actual arena as the curve we use that curve to array it and then we have a second one which is divided by in thirds So again, I all kinds of quick facades, especially a little bit more complex I would do them in blender because it's fairly easy Once we did a series of studies. We sort of had an idea of what we wanted to achieve This is one of the options. So the idea is if we have a facade that's Draped over the whole building is there a way that we can sort of expose the important parts reveal some of the guts in this case We're pinching the points of the entrance and also the concourse level Which is meant to be used public with restaurants and it's meant to be a destination on non-event days as well So I did a series of these tests in blender as well Where it's a very simple mesh and with soft selection and shape keys I pick up some of the forms to look at whether that's achieving something along the lines that I want in this case from this Example I grabbed a couple of the loop curves so you can see here we grabbed the bottom the middle and the top curve from this previous example and After that I took it into Rhino took those curves subdivided them nicely to create a rational structure for both the Long-term that the beam spanning the long direction in this beam spanning in the short direction That we then penalize afterwards So it to do these kinds of curves you can do them in in Rhino as well You probably won't get the same sort of effect because with with with subdivision modeling You understand that the whole element is acting as an entity which is something very important for preserving the Continuity of the curves and because I'm using soft selection on a continuous mesh It's sort of adjusts what I want later down the line as well Not just the bottom curve for example, but the middle curve in here as well So we continue to do a series of studies for timings These are just done with modifiers to understand how light reflects on all of these and how smooth the gradient between something That's shaded and non-shaded is So that I also continue to use in projects. Unfortunately, I cannot talk about at the moment at work, but My wife's not too happy that when I go home I I work on computers all day and then I go home and I continue to work on blender all night as well So this is some of my personal work again. I think this understanding this sort of Functionality in blender beyond our fists is still in its infancy and I only wish to promote that further So in my YouTube channel, I create tutorials on how to do some simple elements within architecture The pavilion is a great typology because it's fairly simple and we use it a lot to Explain either design concepts or software and how to do things on the software side of things So in this case, we have a simple pavilion. This is one of my first tutorials And it's created with an array modifier with a curved modifier It's around a curved garden in London and then we have a couple of lattice modifiers that create something fairly rich Quickly again if I were to do something like this in grasshopper, I would do it It would probably be a little bit more buildable and more rationalized But it would take probably three times as long if not even more to achieve So as I mentioned before I love theaters. So once I understood how to do real theaters in the office I visited a note Project of mine student project in a very tight site in Philadelphia, and I decided to see if I can redo it and sort of put A theater inside of it I did quick sketches in CAD in Rhino about what the theater layouts at the different levels need to be in a section Which I then imported into Blender and used as a basis for understanding how to mass the shape The idea behind this is that it's it's fairly large building. It sits in a fairly classical context It's not gonna look like a house because it's significantly larger neither Shit it looked like a house in my opinion, but those vary But the idea is that it does have some relationship to the context in this case We're sort of picking up the top line and we have a setback that happens beyond it doing this in blender Was very useful because it's what I call digital modeling and not digital modeling in the Sense that we literally scope with a scope brush digital modeling in the sense that we start with a box We look cut and we pull vertices with ease that we can then apply modifiers to afterwards And this is sort of the final result from that study as well Does anybody here get a niche sometimes to do something? You know, you're really good at something It's been a while that you've done it and you just you gotta do it, right? So this was one of these again at the university. We did a lot of polygonal modeling Subdiff modeling so I kind of understand how topology works fairly well at least within architectural context So this is again very simple. We start with a very small chunk that we array both in the x and y axis Then sorry mirror on the x and y axis then we array it and then we use a curve to deform it And by just modifying a very small chunk. I can see the global effect as well So it's a it was a fairly fun project to do which creates some sort of interesting Very rich expression in regards to to bridge So this is a more recent project that I worked. I wanted to push tissue actually a little bit more. It's a Yeah, something that I'm quite interested in so I did this quick sketch of Having two buildings. So it's a mixed use site somewhere imaginary Where we have one solid site and another solid site and there we have this sort of public space, right? It's retail perhaps on the ground levels in the podium and then the public space becomes that middle bit here Which is sort of the public elements in between the buildings So that's where you would have your lifts you have some matriams some sort of regular lounge spaces Sort of like if you imagine here outside, we have the stair so that's sort of the blue part in the sketch and This was the first sort of sketch idea and this is more of a finished element and again It's all using tissue. I'm going to show you the base mesh initially But I found this very kind of fun way to approach in some ways computation with design within architecture And here's sort of another view. I want to show you Some of very fast Yeah, so that's the base mesh that we start with and then I think I did a Subdivide and then unsubdivide to get the diagram so I had my diagram panels and after I had those Then I applied my panel and if I go back now to Presentation and you can sort of see the effect that we have now This was also using vertex weights with an empty and you can sort of see where the empty was Located It's around here and there's a sort of a spherical effect that reduces the intensity of the effect afterwards Now I've been playing with tissue quite a bit and I wanted to show you something else Which is a very non-standard way of using tissue as an architect and fascinated by urban design and actually working some projects in the office So this project I think I have another video that shows it better So this project was what was sort of a test to see what we can do with with With tissue in regards to architecture design So this started with it was a very simple mesh that I put some vertices and subdivided and then I went and in this case Manually randomly selected elements, so we have different materials with those different materials afterwards I model the series of simple buildings and this is showing the modeling part So those are sort of the final Buildings and each one of them. Let's say let's call this a b and c it responds to one of the colors That will go on the site So in the end we can get something Kind of rich in a way I mean very simple in this sense, but it showed sort of a beginning where you can start You know applying tissue in ways that I didn't think it's possible what I see this and actually it's used in here three ways so the first way is to position the actual Footprints of the buildings so the plot sizes, so that's the street Summification of lighting poles and so on in the middle of it. He had just blank Surfaces the next way I use tissue was to create the the tessellations on the actual buildings So all of those are simple modules That on a subdivided mesh that I just applied and the third way was to actually position the buildings Along the site so as you saw in the previous video Each one of those plots was colored a different way so I can apply a different building to it So that's just the beginning of a more sort of personal interest and exploration or how we can use Blender not only for architectural design, but more in the urban design sense, which I think he has some great potentials to do Yeah, so the next steps for me is to continue to spread the use of blended for architectural concept design And I'm also working on a course on Blender as well, which is very much looking at the things that I was just showing So thanks again for checking this out Please visit me on YouTube studio and in case you're interested in architectural course you can scan this QR code here to sign up for the mailing list So you'll be one of the first ones to know when when they're available Thanks