Things to Know When Working With Architect — Part 1
Hey, Reinaldo here, this time I wanted to share with you my journey with SketchUp.
This video is based on my experience working with DP Architect, Ong&Ong, Nikken Sekkei, and Shepley Bulfinch. After 12 years of experience working with various Architects, these are 4 things that can help an Architect or Interior Designer present for their clients.
As 3D artists in the 3D Architectural Visualisation industry, both as freelancers and enterprises, there are several types of clients we’re gonna meet. First are the developers, residential development offices, apartments, or even malls. Then there are the designers whether it’s an interior designer or an architect, individual or company.
These are the 4 things I always highlight to our 2G Studio’s team when working with individuals or Architectural companies.
Before getting into those 4 points, the first thing we need to understand is the work of an Architect or an Interior designer itself. For me, as an Architect or Interior Designer, their job is to “design a life”. For example, there’s a house, it’s 1000 square meters. An architect’s job is to design the owner’s life, how? They are the ones who have to design the house to fit the family and to create a comfortable and liveable environment for the owner’s family's well-being. Parent’s room being the biggest and comfortable so dad could come back home from tiring work and rest, children separate rooms for privacy, family room big and fun so a family can spend time comfortably! Everything is designed about the owner and their family, that is what architect’s and interior designer’s jobs are to me.
So with that being said a key aspect in the work of an Architect or Interior Designer is communication.
Well, of course, design the house according to the client’s preferences, needs, and most importantly their comfort. Avoid miscommunication, beware that miscommunication could occur anytime. Something happened when I was an Interior Designer. I’m a civil engineering graduate, I was desperate and had no idea how to create perspective. I learned everything myself from the internet and as long as it’s visible it’s fine. All I thought about was presentations and how miscommunication happens frequently even though we’ve provided a mood board already, showing the client's reference images and providing our layout plan. A client is a normal person who won’t understand all those things, all they know is that they want a comfortable home. That is why they hire us, to do the job they can’t.
So do reference images help us? Of course.
Can it lead to miscommunication? Yes, it can.
Because people’s imaginations differ, only showing images and asking them to imagine the lighting will look like this image, the material like that, the wall colors green, the room will look like this, in the end, these are all just to give a visual to the client. Then if something doesn’t go as what the client had visualized there’d be a problem, arguments with the client on what we agreed upon, and other things. The question is do we just want to win the argument or do we want to make the client happy? Winning the argument is completely useless as in the end it makes everything awkward between us and the client, obviously we all want a happy ending, right?
That is why 3D Visualization is needed, with 3D you can minimize these problems. Not eliminate, but minimize. So what to do? Render a still image, use a camera then render. Of course, the image has to be as photo-realistic as possible and adapted to the mood you want to achieve. You still have to render an image that reflects your reputation, even the tiniest work is still your work.
Just providing a photorealistic render is good but not for the architects as they’d find it difficult to present their design on the first presentation. That isn’t something cool, their reputation is something we must care about and consider too, that’s why with communication they too can understand the plan and present accordingly.
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