Well, a lot has happened in the meantime as far as this project is concerned. Let’s start with the project name. I decided that I would change the original name from „REBIRTH Brutalism – X“ to HOMELAND. I had been thinking about it for a long time and the more I thought about it, the more it occurred to me that it would be better to choose a rather shorter name. It also gives the project, how shall I put it, a certain meaning and more character. In connection with this, I also decided to give the project a logo, although this logo is still at the design stage.
As you’ve already noticed, this project is set up as a series and I think that such series need a certain guideline, at least I think so, because I don’t know exactly, since I’ve basically only produced a series once and that was years ago. I also mentioned that at the beginning of the project I didn’t really know where the journey would take me, which is why the first updates here were a bit bumpy and chaotic at first. But now that the direction and the goal are clear, the future updates will be a bit more orderly and comprehensible. I probably should have thought more about when I should have published what, how and in what order at the beginning. But now it’s too late and to completely throw everything overboard and republish now makes the whole thing even more confusing than it already is. I also deliberately wanted to share the progress of this project with you so that you can follow how a project of this size is created. The initial problems and error rates are probably completely normal and understandable. Nevertheless, I would like to apologize in this way and hope that you enjoy it.
HOMELAND … how did I come up with this name?
Well, I now follow so many blogs and sites that have accumulated in my feed reader over the years that I can hardly count them. Among them are many architecture blogs, which are not only a great source of inspiration for me, they also provide me with the necessary basic and background knowledge about architecture in general. Basically, I need to go into a little more detail here to make it a little easier to understand. Some of you have been following me and my work for a very long time, I originally got into concept art, matte painting and environment design ages ago and wanted to start my career in that. But over the years I’ve just sat down in a quiet hour and thought long and hard about what I really want to do and, more importantly, what makes sense from my point of view.
As I am now 46 years young and I probably wouldn’t find any jobs worth mentioning in this sector, I decided some time ago to look into architecture. It’s not that this subject was completely new to me, I originally wanted to be an architect, that was my dream job as a child and growing up. Unfortunately, things turned out differently, but my love of architecture has stayed with me all these years and so I decided to opt for architectural visualization in the future – if I can’t build it, I can at least design it. However, I am less interested in the classic catalog architectural visualization, my dream or goal would be to create a mixture of futuristic, mystical, somewhat strange but still familiar, coldly repulsive but at the same time homely style. The latter brings us back to the naming. I’ve gone into a lot of detail now, but I just wanted to tell you my story and motivations to make it a little easier to understand. A small side note by the way… because of the reasons mentioned above, my portfolio is a bit chaotic. Since I haven’t created many ArchViz projects yet, there are still some old works that will disappear more and more over time.
But now back to the project.
For „HOMELAND 01“ I originally had a building in the form of a monolith in mind. Somehow it was supposed to be a Brutalist block, but gradually I wanted a bit more structure without discarding the original idea. So I started by box modeling some concept versions of the building to gradually find the right style that I liked better. This is actually the best part for me, but also the most difficult, as I am very erratic with my decisions. One day I like this and that and the next day I could smack it against the wall. Believe me, I must have made 12 to 15 attempts before I had this second form of the building in the can, but I rejected them all.
As you can see, the second shape of the building is now going in a completely different direction and I’m generally happy with it. Conversely, this also means that I have to model more details for the façade to make this type and shape of building work. There shouldn’t be too many details, but just enough to strike a balance between functionality, style and aesthetics. To do this, I had to separate the side walls from the core of the building so that I could model various mechanical parts in and on the wall. This way I can later model and design the interior separately from the wall panels.
Finally, I would like to point out that I will be posting quick and short updates on my Tumblr blog in the future. I will also post some other things there that might be of interest to some of you. I’ve actually been around since the early days of Tumblr and I’ve thought long and hard about what might be useful to keep my website from getting cluttered. Tumblr seems perfect for this, as I also don’t want to clutter up my other social channels like Mastodon or „X-itter“ too much with irrelevant progress.
For those of you who want to, feel free to visit my new resurrected Tumblr blog, I would be very happy about it. I’ve also included an RSS option for those who don’t have a Tumblr account to follow or simply don’t want to follow me, so you can at least add my Tumblr blog to your feed reader.
So, that’s it for today and I thank you for your interest and willingness to read and wish you a nice rest of the weekend. See you soon!