Lázaro presents loft-style house in visuals that "go beyond hyper-realistic"

These renderings by visualisation studio VER depict a board-marked concrete house with factory-like glazing, which Mexican architecture studio Lázaro is planning to build in the city of Uruapan.

The board-marked concrete structure, which Lázaro expects to begin building later this year, will be wedged between two existing buildings on a long and narrow site in the city’s Magdalena neighbourhood.

Magdalena House by Lázaro

The front and back of Magdalena House will be bounded by patches of greenery, while expanses of gridded glazing will frame views out to a large mango tree already on the site.

The windows – similar to the Crittal-style glazing often used for factories, but which has become popular for industrial-style housing – will also allow natural light into both ends of the house.

“The client wanted a loft-like environment for one person. The project takes this as a basis and spaces that are connected visually are designed,” said the architects.

“In addition, light is introduced through large blacksmith windows that take advantage of the view of the mango tree.”

Magdalena House by Lázaro

The renderings created by Guadalajara-based visualisation studio VER, show these bands of glazing paired with stripes of board-marked concrete.

The textured concrete work continues through the interior, where an arched cavity hosts a tunnel-like bedroom adjoining a plant-filled atrium.

A study space also on the upper floor features a ceiling of criss-crossing wooden beams. These wooden elements, paired with the glazing and steel-framed balustrades, are intended to lend the space a “timeless industrial” appearance.

Two spiral staircases bracket the triple-height atrium, which will help to naturally ventilate the space and also provide an entrance. A walkway passing through the leaves of ferns and palms will lead to a mezzanine living space.

Magdalena House by Lázaro

To create the renderings, visualiser Miguel Valverde first created a model of the space using 3D Max software, and then used V-Ray and Photoshop for rendering and after effects.

“When we create these images, our purpose is to go beyond hyper-realistic images,” Valverde told Dezeen.

“We try to do our best with the technical process – but it’s not the most important for us,” he explained. “When we start working with an image, we start with an emotion process. We believe that through emotion we can give an experience to the client.”

Magdalena House by Lázaro

The studio believes its atmospheric renderings can help architects sell their idea to clients, helping them to imagine themselves living in the space.

“We think as if the building is already done,” said Valverde. “So, as a photographer, we ask ourselves. What would be the best human perspective shot if our intention was to take a photograph?”

“What do we want to feel when we see the final image? Which weather conditions does the context represent? How do we want the light – warm, cold, soft, hard? How would the people interact with the building?”

“So with these processes, we can create an image that doesn’t just speak about the architecture. It’s more important it speaks of time and space.”

Valverde is not alone in his beliefs. London-based visualisation artist Forbes Massie spoke to Dezeen last year about the value in creating renderings with a painterly rather than photorealistic aesthetic to “evoke atmosphere”.

Other recent examples of architects and visualisers taking this approach to renderings include plans for a rose-hued holiday retreat in Ukraine, a sinuous home made up of tiered gardens proposed in Spain and multiple residential projects across the UK and Sweden by Ström Architects.

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All-pink Silent Room creates quiet sanctuary beside a Beirut highway

Lebanese designer Nathalie Harb created this pavilion for Beirut Design Week to give residents of the city access to silence.

The pink wooden structure, dubbed the Silent Room, sits on a parking lot beside a busy highway in Beirut.

Nathalie Harb's Silent Room at Beirut Design Week

It is intended to provide residents and visitors with a “cocoon-like environment” to escape the surrounding noise from traffic, construction sites, electronics and crowds.

Noting that silence is “an exceptional privilege only a few can indulge”, Harb has opened the Silent Room to the general public to access for free, individually, for up to 30 minutes at a time.

Nathalie Harb's Silent Room at Beirut Design Week

“Our cities are often configured in such a way that underprivileged communities are the most affected by higher noise pollution – think roads, airports, industry,” said Harb.

“Urban segregation can be mapped through noise variations across the city. Noise pollution, as experienced differently between rich and poor inhabitants of the city, represents a social injustice.”

Nathalie Harb's Silent Room at Beirut Design Week

Harb worked with London-based architecture collective BÜF to create the structure.

She also called on sound designer Khaled Yassine to create a soundtrack to the space, which is not actually silent. Instead, to counter the noise bleeding in from outside, the Silent Room plays a composition based on recordings of the city at its quietest hour.

Nathalie Harb's Silent Room at Beirut Design Week

The installation is painted in a shade of pink, which is something of a colour of the moment and was widely seen at Milan design week 2017.

Harb, who works primarily in set design and installations, chose the hue to challenge the usual association of calm with cool colours.

Nathalie Harb's Silent Room at Beirut Design Week

“The colour pink is a soothing colour,” Harb told Dezeen. “Its hue is the closest to the skin or images of the embryo.”

“And it is somehow a colour unexpected for silence, usually associated with more austere colours.”

Nathalie Harb's Silent Room at Beirut Design Week

The Silent Room will remain in place at the parking site between Mar Mikhael and Burj Hammoud until 27 May. After this, Harb will look at reconfiguring the installation for other cities.

The site is near the main Beirut Design Week venue of KED, which hosted exhibitions until 26 May. KED’s programme included Speculative Needs, an exhibition of conceptual student projects anticipating the products humans might need in a dystopian future.

Nathalie Harb's Silent Room at Beirut Design Week

Calming and meditative spaces have been a recurring theme at recent design weeks.

Asif Khan bought three leafy Forest pavilions to the London Design Festival in late 2016, while SHoP architects’ Wave/Cave was an immersive terracotta installation intended to give visitors to this year’s Milan design week a moment of solace.

Photography is by Raintree.

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