In this first stage I focused on the analysis of the building from an architectural and material point of view.
The building is part of a historical urban context and the materials present highlight the dialectic between the traditional and the contemporary.
The first thing I did was start getting familiar with the building and all the surrounding elements.
To do this, I imagined that I was there and started walking around the building a little bit, finding several angles and perspectives that could help me to spot possible camera positions.
After that, I started to illuminate the scene through a basic hdri to try to highlight the shapes of the main building and the surrounding environment.

Being architect and visualizer at the same time I have developed habit of analyzing basic architectural qualities ( in this case the ones that are relevant for visualization) such as form, plasticity, transparency, ‘depth’ etc. as the first step. Just like using a scale model in architectural practice. I do that with simple AO and glass materials because transparency is important in this first step with addition of some directional light for more contrast and stronger shadows. I find this very helpful even if I don’t use any kind of direct light in the final scene. Any other lighting, materials, etc. are irrelevant in this step.
I will choose several potential camera viewpoints and I will discuss each one in more detail while establishing simple evaluating criteria.
Exploring around the scene I found out that almost every viewpoint provides better composition when using portrait orientation because of narrow space and rotunda like appearance of central theme building in perspective views. Because of general necessity to use wide angle whole building itself looks slimmer then it actually is. We can guess those are the qualities architects looked for while designing this structure in not so large square. I decided to use portrait orientation with classic photography aspect ratio of 5:4.
Camera 1
Using wide angle perpendicular to the facade of the building provides architectural elevation feel which in my experience us architects, designers and visualizers usually like but other clients not so much. This view especially emphasizes large windows and interior depth and provides us with insight of what is going on inside. Exterior have ‘layered depth’ feel and it looks like the whole building ate most of the public space available. Because of a very wide angle and too much distortion whole scene looks almost too much gimmicky.

First of all, i was trying to choose more “architectural” point of view to the building, so i do a bunch of renders and for now i check them. Next, i have to begin thinking about to choose a better one and adjust it with light setup at the same time.