Energiefeld Norderstedt
Die Worte “Norderstedt” und “Energiefeld” fallen einem nicht unbedingt als zwingende Assoziation ein, aber was Paul unter Betreuung von SUPERURBAN für die EGNO daraus machte – einfach großartig!
architecture
Benetton Teheran
Update June, 22th: the winning teams can be seen here: www.benettongroup.com/designinginteheran/. We didn’t have much hope, altough we thought the design of teamwerk architekten was brilliant – but with some 800 contestants a lot of sheer luck is involved to win.
Winners are: Grzegorz Witold Woronowicz (Poland) for Project A and Yana Radeva and Alexander Shinolov (Bulgaria) for Project B. Congratulations!
mood design: vorher – nachher
Recently we did some experiments with speedpainting, storyboard sketches and mood design. Actually we have to admit that the results are much better suited for the advertising industry. Realising this I remembered the sketches I did for the famous Hamburg agency Jung von Matt and their Sparkassen-TV-Clip:
Another example of Paul’s mood sketches – completely fictional, just out of curiosity how to speed-paint such a nice car…
Last year we were asked to create an archetypical German cityscape – by day and by night. Apparently other countries use German (and other north-European) cities as “role models” when it comes to urban living. The animations were meant to be used for the next Expo in Shanghai, the exhibition design came from KUK Filmproduction, München.
on3studio.com
In January Paul and I visited my old Heimat Hamburg and met a lot of old friends and clients. So we stopped also at Zsolts and Nikos studio to have a peek what and how they were doing.
Zsolt Szeibert and Nikolaus Türk own on3studio. They are creating architectural illustrations and despite the use of rendering-software those illustrations aren’t yet some other renderings but artwork, at least as far as their clients let them go with their artistry.
Of course there are models to be mentioned, not the least auralab, however Zsolt and Niko are creating some style unprecedent in German architectural illustration. Interestingly Zsolt told me, that he is completely fed up with all this possibilities of the rendering software (in their case Cinema4D with VRay). He prefers a quick’n'dirty approach, using very rough renderings and doing all the fine work in Photoshop.
Charles dePicciotto, architect. Hamburg.
This morning we received an e-mail telling news about Charles dePicciottos new website. I like the cool and relaxed, yet classic appearance. The good thing about Flash-websites is the control over typography. There are downsides however: it’s impossible to copy text, it’s difficult to change content and – most importantly – it’s impossible to link a specific page of the site. Considering the functionality we think it was still a good choice.
We were pleased to admire pictures of the finished project we illustrated some years ago: four townhouses at the prestigious Bebelallee, Hamburg (Photographs by Klaus Frahm, Hamburg):
a tribute to Peter Wels
Als Architekturzeichner verdanken wir Peter Wels sehr viel. Als ich Mitte der Achtziger Jahre mein Studium in Braunschweig begann, waren es seine exquisiten Arbeiten, die als unerreichbare Vorbilder die Architektur von gmp, Schweger und Partner oder Kleffel-Köhnholdt zum Leuchten brachten. Zu dieser Zeit konnten wir uns nicht vorstellen, wie diese Darstellungen entstanden sein mochten, auch unsere Professoren waren (herablassend) ratlos.
Jahre später, nachdem ich Peter Wels persönlich kennengelernt hatte, zeigte er mir seine Technik. Viel interessanter aber war seine zeichnerischen Vorbilder und seine Vision von Architektur kennenzulernen. Denn in diesem Zusammenhang könnte auch die Rede sein vom Verlust der bildnerischen Urteilskraft in der deutschen Kultur und davon wie aus Zeichenunterricht “Kunstunterricht” hatte werden können.
Peter Wels hat eine genaue Vorstellung von seiner Kunst und seinem Wert. Vor vielen Jahren, ich zeichnete gerade einen Wettbewerb für gmp, sagte Meinhard von Gerkan zu mir (jovial-herablassend): “Naja, dem Peter Wels seine Zeichnungen sind ja immer so Schatzkästchen…” Genau das sind sie – oder besser: sie lassen die dargestellte Architektur als Schatz erscheinen. Wenn die Architektur dem nicht gewachsen ist, so liegt das nicht an Peters Zeichnungen.
tempelhof airport is dead, long live tempelhof airport!
Tempelhof Airport still is associated with the cold war, the resistance against stalinist extortion and the stamina of the Berlin people. Until last October there were still regular flight operations, although not on a grand scale. Nevertheless this intriguing city airport was still popular among businesspeople and private pilots alike. Even the nearby residents took pride in “their” Tempelhof.
The political decision (seemingly prepared long ago) to shut it’s operations down seems not understandable unless one considers the trauma of old communist cadres. The succesful breach of the “Berlin blockade” left a thorn in their flesh; they regained influence in Berlin politics and now Tempelhof was closed even though noone had any plan how to use this area. (The operations still earned some money and the huge hangars were very popular for start-up companies.)
The City of Berlin launched several competitions to find a new use of this huge free space in the heart of this metropolis and these marvelous illustrations (Pauls! He’s the man!) show some propositions how parts of these grounds could be used.
Latz & Partner: courtyard for a Madrid office building
There are very few German landscape architects whose portfolio contains designs for international clients. One of those is Freising-based Latz & Partner. Founder Peter Latz was Professor for landscape design at the Technichal University Munich. When I they asked to help out, I was happy to oblige. The resulting illustrations are some of the best I ever did. There was nothing new however about the techniques involved: basically there was a pencil drawing on which I painted several color-layers in Photoshop.
