[eric berkson]

Precedent Research

Located in the Setagaya Ward of Tokyo, The Kidosaki House was designed to accommodate a married couple and their respective parents. The house is designed as three separate units to allow each household a measure of privacy. The approach to the house curves gently away from the street directing circulation into a courtyard where two sets of steps diverge: one descending into the courtyard allows access to the parent’s apartments while the other ascends to the couple’s apartment. The courtyard and an enclosed roof garden feature trees and plantings similar to those growing on the site prior to the house's construction. The courtyard and comparative lack of outward facing windows bring a sense of refuge in an otherwise densely crowed urban environment.

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Autocad 2-D Drafting

The images above depict the first steps of creating a three-dimensional Revit model. Floor plans obtained during precedent research were imported into AutoCad and then traced. The resulting line work forms a simple template from which the locations and relationships between walls, doors, windows, and other structural elements can be determined. This line work was then imported into Revit where it formed the basis of the three-dimensional model seen above. At this point only the walls of the ground floor have been completed. While accurate dimensionally, the walls haven’t had materials assigned to them yet.

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Revit 3-D Model

The renderings above show the completed model with all of its materials, furniture, and lighting fixture in place. One of the greatest aspects of working with Revit 2009 is the Mental Ray rendering engine which replaced the old Accurender engine used in previous editions of Revit (example of an Accurender rendering). The production of renderings began by turning on Revit’s shadow feature to determine camera angles and optimal time of day / season for the rendered image. Once camera views and time of day were determined a series of low quality renderings were produced to fine tune material settings and the proper balance between number of reflections, refractions, and active lighting fixtures (all of which increase the time it takes to render a view). The final renderings were produced as high resolution, 300dpi images; each of which took around an hour to produce on my 2 GHz laptop. Overall, I am very satisfied with the quality of the renderings, especially the artificially lit interior views.  

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