“The man alone tends to epitomise existentialism, and, in the words of the academic E. H. McCormick may be defined as “the solitary, rootless nonconformist, who in a variety of forms crops up persistently in New Zealand writing.”
The notion of the single man, living alone, deep in the New Zealand landscape, is a theme that I’ve been interested in my whole adult life, crystallized by the reading of Mulgan’s classic a couple of years back, as well as James Salter’s “Solo Faces”. This is character existing at society’s edge, defined by his stoic laconism. He’s a man, or figure, well known within New Zealand – he is who came here at the turn of the century and worked the land alone, spending great swathes of his life in the oft-bleak, unforgiving landscape of Aotearoa. This is the man who saw the horrors of the Great War, the War that followed a generation later, the social upheaval of globalisation – these impressions kept inside his whole life – Nothing healed, just covered by time.
The landscape he takes refuge in might take the form of the central North Island, or perhaps the grandeur of the Southern Alps. Regardless, the relationship between man and country is at once adversarial, yet rewarding. The land supplies the man, provided he can survive the desperate loneliness and harsh environment. In many ways, this is my father, his father before his and so on back through time. This is a man who is on the brink of extinction, one wholly unconcerned with the frivolities of the modern world and determined to live on their own terms, at any cost.
Alongside this story exists the classic New Zealand built form, taking the form of sheds, cabins and baches, littered across the landscape. Many countries can claim this, but this typology has been studied at length in our architectural history – perhaps the closest thing we have to an architecture “of place”, with our modern vernacular being inspired by this, taking the form of “Elegant Sheds” as they are known locally. These were originally where the Man Alone spent his time, a singular expression of place and time, produced from what the land and forest would allow to be taken.
There is a great deal of writing on both these narratives, so I intend to explore these firstly, to establish a specific story to explore and tell in my works – the challenge being how to weave these themes together in a meaningful manner, without doing disservice to either. Whether it is a replication of what once existed – an ontological inquiry, or a modern interpretation – a final refuge of the trope, remains to be seen.
Artistically, this project will be inspired by New Zealand artists, such as Rita Angus, these post-war painters seeking to illustrate New Zealand in a wholly new, and now emblematic manner. They sought to capture a particularly tumultuous time, as we shifted away from the commonwealth dominion, becoming a country with our own identity. Capturing the environment and landscape will be incredibly important, so guidance from these artists around how to capture the intensely dry summer days of the far south or the misty, damp silence of the deep Urewera bush.
Finally, the technical workflow will be primarily that of real-time, using Unreal Engine. Fully dynamic lighting, using LPV and Distance Fields for soft shadows and AO, though this will be contingent on the quality of output, with reversion to a traditional baked lighting possible. Archicad, Sketchup, 3ds Max, World Machine, Speedtree and Substance suite will also be utilised.
This is just an early concept post, something to get my thoughts on “paper”. I appreciate the slightly dramatic nature of it – I’m not a hugely skilled visualiser, so having something to drive the story is going to be crucial.
I have to admit that I’m a little confused by how this posting system works – I’m guessing we create new entries for major updates, and simply comment on each of these with minor updates associated to the overall theme of each entry? How do we include images in this comment section?
Here’s a link to my Pinterest board for this competition – https://www.pinterest.nz/etblen/man-alone-cabin-environment/
Some further thoughts after a fair amount of reading.
The search for a New Zealand cultural identity seem, historically, linked to our landscape – you could say it is our culture, rather than the location for the culture. – “The silence so often spoken of through two centuries, the intolerable emptiness, is now also the silence, the empty space, the absence of a truly New Zealand painting and writing, and of a New Zealand audience for them. The remedy, then, for this agony, is to make these empty lands speak, and visually to appear, and so to have a culture”
This Nationalist viewing of landscape as culture is almost always tied to the notions of solitude and silence, two major themes of likewise attached to the Man Alone image.Further to this, even today, the idea of a bach, hut or shed standing as a solitary marker of human existence in the vastness of nature is the default viewing of our architectural identity. Thus, culture = a landscape of solitude and silence, and the architectural output linked to this is again defined by these themes – quiet, pragmatism, stoicism – the expression being the simple, honest, singular built form. Therefore, culture, landscape, and architecture meld together in a holistic relationship, where the experience of each is defined by one another.
With a view to typology, there is essentially the option of the Bach, the Shed or the Hut. While all could be honestly applied here, the Hut stands out as the most appropriate.It is located, generally, deep in the interior of the country, and is infact defined by its own interiority – the spatial focus is inward, with a view to protection from the elements and ritualistic behaviours such as eating, sleeping and the like. There is no space for anything but the necessities, and this includes behaviour. This aligns well with the timber modernist traditions of New Zealand – perhaps unrefined, but honest, pragmatic, logical and inherently linked to place – people are temporary, the landscape is the only constant.
Plenty more to talk about here, but for brevity, I’ll leave it for another post – I would include images if I knew how!
It’s been a hell of a couple of weeks – I’ve barely touched this, aside from doing some sketches at work and some reading and writing – I find the latter helps my crystallise my ideas quite nicely.
The first point of reference is the infamous (within NZ Architectural circles) image of Hans Knutzen sitting on the verandah of his modest timber Hut/Shed, located in Piha, New Zealand. It has been held up as an example of our our timber vernacular – flat roof, exterior living space, embedded in the wilderness, modest size, rough but honest detailing (this a bone of contention when a certain Mr Pevsner visited here in the 1950s), and living space limited to sleeping, cooking and sitting.
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Ultimately, this image turned out to be not quite the universal kiwi truth hoped for, but regardless, it provides a nice starting point as I follow the thread of 1950s Timber modernism blended with a Man Alone narrative.
So, I now have a sense of scale, materiality, volume, programme and an architectural language to begin with.
SCALE: Very limited, this is an exercise in pulling things back as far as possible
MATERIALITY: Borne of the “place” – timber primarily, though there are more modern allowances such as the galvanised corrugate tha adorns every shed across this country
VOLUME: Simple, powerful spaces, produced by abstract form, ala Tadao Ando and our own Group Architects of the 1950s
LANGUAGE: An extesion of volume and form, this will manifest via detailing – think exposed outriggers and subfloor framing, single plane roofs,
I’m not one for “looking back” too much, so I consider it appropriate to put my own twist on the tectonics I’ve referred to – maybe a place of my own, or an idealised place that seeks to encapsulate all my thoughts and desires for something that is slowly dying out. Here follow a variety of inspirations that address the above topics, thusfar… and some that point to the landscape I’m interested in (the place where the protagonist of Man Alone spends a great deal of time)
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I love the voyage to take as along with you with this in-depth study of what you call “New Zealand’s classic built form…”. Seems that the CABINS theme hit the nail on its head for you 😉
You got the system here 100% – keep it up!
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Just a little work on my landscape. I grabbed some height maps and popped them into World Machine. Nothing too fancy right now – just experimenting with erosion values and image overlays. Plenty to clean up here.
The area is Mount Ruapehu, Mount Ngauruahoe ( the two cones), the Kaimanawa ranges to the east/left, and the “desert” between them. I selected this area, as the protagonist of Man Alone escapes here for an extended period of time, in an attempt to escape the drama that has pervaded his life. He spends months alone in the deep bush, exposed to the elements, barely surviving… and only managing to do so after discovering a small hut that gave him shelter and a chance at survival. It’s also an area of the country I am quite familiar with. It is just south of where I grew up, and somewhere I traveled through several times a year for 5 years while studying architecture. It is barren, unforgiving, beautiful and severe. I’ve attached a photo a took of Ruapehu and Ngauruhoea few years back too, for context. https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/ff53d81095a9f6ffb1911bf70f4bb6783c85d19aa176222ac35b4fccc464993e.jpg
It’s an area the reminds me of No Country for Old Men – there is little that lives here, to the point it is where our Army does its live round training… not somewhere you want to stick around too long.
A little progression with the cabin design itself
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It’s looking a little too “container housing” for my liking, this is likely the board and batten cladding, which will look a little softer once textured, though I may shift to vertical weatherboards or just plywood panels (rainscreen type). Then again – bevelback weatherboards seems the most appropriate…
The interface between interior and exterior is still a little clumsy too – we have this overused term “indoor-outdoor flow” down here that I find excruciating. I’m not interested in opening the interior up totally to the exterior. The concept driving this project is a place that you can hide away from the landscape – slightly adversarial. Openings should act to do more than just open. They can control the landscape by framing it, and the threshold between inside and outside can be more subtle than just a mass of glass openings.
The exterior decking will be contingent on the exact site and will likely play a major role in the exterior-interior relationship. The extruded box section is the sleeping area – I wanted a distinct space that reads from both inside and outside, somewhere that “holds” you.
The roof is just that – a roof. I want it to read as intentionally large – this is a reference back to the elemental approach I am taking with form – an almost primal simplicity that is functional and legible. Timber structure, timber underside, galvanised steel longrun atop. Simple.
The rear-most mass wall will be poured concrete, maybe stone. The former is more useful structurally, but the latter is more likely achievable in isolated conditions. It acts to anchor the project into the landscape, the remaining form seeming to cantilever off its mass – roof, wall and floor congealing upon it, then springing out from it as distinct elements, like a growth from the site.
As the location I’m basing my cabin on is fairly remote, and a 4-5 hour car drive from where I live, I’m relying on Google Maps/Street View alongside my existing knowledge of New Zealand landscape flora to build up a biome.
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That image quite nicely describes the various layers of the area, as does this – “Kaimanawa forest gives way to scrub, tussock and alpine herb fields at the tree line (which ranges between 1300 to 1500 m above sea level) and in the interior valleys where cold air ponding prevents tall forest establishment.”
Some occasional podocarps crop up too – rimu, matai, miro and kamahi. This website has been useful in understanding the various species and differences – https://teara.govt.nz/en/shrublands/page-1, including that the shrubs in New Zealand often have a specific form, existing exclusively here – Filiramulate. This is thought to be both a protection against the harsh climate (windy, dry and cold) as well as protection from browsing Moa (now extinct – https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moa)
Based on the attached image, I’m breaking things down into the following;
Layer 1 – Soil/underfoot – dry and dusty with occasional volcanic rock. Dead/dry grass pressed flat, an overall scattering of small stones
Layer 2 – Low-Medium grasses – A mix of green and brown grasses, this will be in places where no scrub or tussock is growing – so likely in clearings and edges where scrub and tussocks begin. Nothing too specific here.
Layer 3 – Scrub/Tussock – Species will include Red Tussock, Inaka, Wire Rush and Coprosma, as well as Mountain Flax.
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Layer 4 – Shrublands – Manuka/Kanuka outcrops, and the aforementioned podocarps, particularly in valleys, which you can see in the below image (a good overview of what I’m looking to achieve)
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I’m also keen to pop in some easter eggs for the botanically inclined 9 http://nzpcn.org.nz/flora_details.aspx?ID=780
Unsure about the inclusion of water – rivers/streams etc. I’m quite drawn to the notion of a place devoid of life, somewhere quite tough and unwelcoming…
Looking Good. Like where this is going. Mine too is in NZ, but i must admit i am not as determined as yourself to keep the planting accurate to the area. 🙂 I like your cabin design too. Keep up the good work Eliot!
Thanks Brendan. I’m really trying to put as much thought as I can into this, even something trivial like vegetation is important to me
Just a couple landscape progress shots. Very early days!
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Have spent some serious time on an intense landscape material – reasonably complex! Unfortunately I’m having issues with tessellation using material instances, so this is an ongoing project. Spent some time today breaking down what I will be trying to achieve each week – will post that tomorrow so I have some external pressure to get it done. Really enjoying this!
Nice. What are you using for this? 3dsmax, forest pack or this already in Ue4?
Also are you using different LODs further away?
Thanks, this is UE4.
The vegetation is placeholder only, for the most part. The long grass is an old megascan-based asset I made a while back, the thick green bushes are probably useful but need some work.
The grass culls to zero about 8m from the camera, the bushes continue out some distance but transition to billboards at about the 3m mark (you can spot that kinda easily).
I’ve grown to hate this landscape, it doesn’t speak of the place at all. So I’m trying a new spot, looking for some “tighter” mountains and gullys, not unlike the image below
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I am seriously considering a trip south to the Kaimanawas sometime soon. i don’t feel I can do this justice without it.
Thanks for commenting. I don’t think this system of posting is very conducive to feedback in all honesty.
This is better. Literally just a height map from World Machine dumped into UE4, but it feels more appropriate to the area. Having issues with World Machine – can’t build higher than 4k resolution. I think I will revert to a tiled build, as 50km x 50km is going to cause issues down the line… Also, you can definitely see why the filmed a lot of the Lord of the Rings trilogy in this area… Might need to tone down the fog…
Also got my landscape tessellation behaving as it should. As per DICE and their approach in BF1, it fades out a few metres from the user camera, saving performance.
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Thanks for replying Eliot. You live in a beautiful part of the world bro!
It is interesting to hear how you are managing the balance of detail vs performance.
I personally have only done 1 large landscape scene before this challenge. Usually in Arch viz, I putting in photograph mattes etc. So have not had to deal with the LOD balance like this. It definitely a challenge, but it something I been keen to diversify into.
Hope you go well with the new location. I also chose NZ. Vegetation is same as your new photo. All the close up vegetation is heath above the treeline. I have found the tutorials from Quixel on youtube to be helpful. No doubt you are familiar with them too.
Look forward to seeing your next update!
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Cabin design, for the most part, complete. Plenty of detail to add yet, but that should be done this week, so some in-game shots should follow soon.
I’ve also had a rethink of my landscape, though am battling with World Machine. Hell of a tough program to get your head around, infinite parameters!
Jeez I’ve got a lot to do…
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First UE4 test – Datasmith is amazing for this, took a few minutes to get it all in there. Only on preview lighting right now, but a promising start!
Now to start modelling some other pieces – in particular a small caliber rifle. I’m not a strong poly-modeller, so this should be interesting!
Been working on my landscape layers in the Quixel Mixer Beta – so much fun! Addictive, and the hours fly by…
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Been working on my landscape layers in Quixel Mixer – hell of a fun program to use! Have also been working up some foliage, will renew my speedtree subscription at some stage and try knock a few options out. Basically only need 2-3 species from Speedtree, everything else can be modelled in Max.
Feel like an echo here…
Megascans assets inside UE4… took a while to figure out the intricacies, and UE4 is still fighting me.
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Landscape has been holding me back massively. Very enjoyable, but massively punishing. Cabin itself is going well, have prepped a few specific props based on my readings – will post soon. Hoping we get a time extension here…
Regarding the landscape – did you try to blend the materials above? My problem with the landscape is that if I use only one material then displacement works fine but it doesnt look as great when I’m blending a couple of materials together (using the landscape paint tool)
Hey I didn’t notice your work until you commented on my project. You should post something in the main page 🙂 I didnt go through all the post and didnt recognize you post in the comments (I’m also not really familiar with the contest page, would prefer for it to work like a regular forum) Cool stuff here I’m really looking forward to youre progress since youre strugling with UE like I am. I’ll be checking on your stuff more often!