Recreation of Zaha Hadid's NYC Building
When I was 14 years old, I visited New York City for the first time. During my walk on the High Line, I discovered one of my favorite buildings in the world - Zaha Hadid's 520 West 28th. With sweeping facades and striking shapes, the building seemed to ripple with movement even while standing still.
At the time, I'd just upgraded from designing my dream mansion in The Sims to purchasing my first license for 3ds Max. Inspired by Hadid's masterpiece, I set myself a challenge: to recreate the building in 3D. For two months I carefully modeling every curve and corner of the building via reference photos in my camera roll. The finished model totaled to over one billion polygons and nearly fried my computer (unfortunately at the time I didn't understand what the Optimizer Modifier was 😣). With this model I rendered 3D walkthroughs in virtual reality in which anyone could easily tour the building with access to YouTube or a headset.
Not only did I learn a great deal of technical skills throughout this project, but also how architecture can be both deeply imaginative and functional - a balance I aim for in all facets of my design and development work.
Architecture Models and Renders
A compilation of various architectural renders over the past 8 years.
Through years of experimentation, I've developed an intuitive understanding of what makes a render feel real. It's not just about technical settings – it's also about composing the flow of a space, curating the layout, capturing the way fog dances through light, and including the subtle imperfections that reveal a space's lived history.
Each project is designed with custom high-poly 3D models, lighting design, camera work, high-fidelity render settings (denoising, ray tracing, global illumination), color grading, and detailed UV mapping and texturing using Adobe Substance.
Object Models
A mix of models for friends, Sketchfab, and a sunglass company.
Miscealleanous Models
A mix of models for friends, art contests, Sketchfab, and from my time at the AR startup Augmio.
