Converted entry by Iryna Nalyvaiko

My entry for this challenge is “abandoned Catholic churches of Ukraine”. With this work I would like to draw attention to the massive deterioration of abandoned architectural monuments.

The reason for the decline of these Catholic churches is the affiliation of modern citizens to a different religion – Orthodox. Most of these churches were built by the Polish many years ago, who at that time governed the current lands of Western & Central Ukraine. These buildings have fallen into disrepair for many reasons and the main one is rather simple – the locals belong to another denomination of Christianity. Currently these buildings are being destroyed, mostly, by weather conditions, as well as lack of care and restoration.

The saddest thing in this story is that nobody will restore these churches in the future. Many of them are found on the outskirts of small and almost deserted villages. Restoration of such buildings does not make any economic sense, they will not become cultural or tourist centers. What is more, currently more and more people are leaving those villages and are moving to big cities or abroad, looking for a better life, therefore, these small deserted villages are becoming even more deserted or abandoned completely.

To participate in this challenge, I chose more than one specific building. My project will emphasize the common features of these churches.
My renovation will have nothing to do with religion – my dream is to give these structures a second life in the sense in which they will be of interest to potential visitors – by turning them into Museums, Art Galleries or Exhibitions.
Also, since it’s digital art, I don’t really want to stick to reality;)

Pictures and names of these buildings, as well as screenshots of work-in-progress renderings are attached to this post.

Converted entry by Erfan3p

Urmia radio and television centre was built in 1965 by one of the greatest architects of its time” Jahangir Darvish”.
This building was one of the first radio and television centres of Iran by that time. The goal was to expand and progress media and television in the northwest of the country. Its site is bigger than 3000 square meters and has been built on a hill, It gives a great view of the road for the passengers and because of its bright materials (brick and concrete), it literally glows in a clear sky. When looking from afar, it more looks like a crown and it is obvious that this building is way different from other buildings in the city. I can tell the only building which follows form and a specific type of style in the local area is this place which I will try to convert to something new.
I wish we had more buildings like this in our city (alive), because when you look at them you kind of feel that something about the place you’re living is special and it is more of an icon than a building. It seems the place used to be a big hall with no columns in the middle because of its very incredible structure which covers 1200 square meters of roofed space. I couldn’t find the buildings plan unfortunately but as it seemed when I visited the place there were no space separators in between nor walls and I’m pretty sure they used this place as a television studio (some parts of it) because it is designed to get less natural light inside of it. despite that, it has so many windows and entrances, again, inside it is quite dark there and it has only three light sheds on the roof (square-shaped). Coming to the current state of the building, it has been abandoned for over 30 years and over time the buildings interior space got destroyed by weather or unworthy people who stole infrastructure of the building and damaged its walls, but the building is fully standing, and to me, it is more resistance than any building in the city because they used high-quality materials and a stiff structure.
Coming to this challenge, I’m planning to repair and change its functionality, it’s such a shame that we haven’t made this building alive. I will try to convert this building into something new, fresh and green! My main purpose in this project will be a small contribution to limiting global warming.
I’m sure this is gonna be a great challenge for me and for everyone who is participating.
And one thing more about the name of the project, I think buildings have characters and they are like trees in the woods, they don’t speak but they say a lot about things we don’t already know, because of that I decided to name this project “Forsaken” since it is very unfair to leave them to be demolished one day. But who knows, maybe we will understand the deep meaning of reusing and restoring what we have instead of replacing and making something new. As they said: We can only see what is not there, and miss what is in front of us.
I also wanna thank all sponsors and Mr Ronen Bekerman
Good luck to everyone.

Converted entry by Shiju NK

CONCEPT :
The Smiths were keen on preserving parts of what is left behind of their family’s bygone workshop – portions of the crumblings walls, the trees that still stand strong inside, ruins of a boat since they loved boating and the landscape engulfing the property.
All that the Smiths envisioned to me was, to not strip the ruins of its historic integrity and to retain as much of the original feel of the space as possible.
I was immediately drawn to this sensitive scheme of recreating a family’s visions into reality. This in particular is going to be a challenge and responsibility, breathing a new life into an old structure. My journey of this conversion project begins…

LOCATION AND SITE :
The beautiful property is surrounded by lush greenery and farm lands, a small canal located adjacent with the backwaters running below the front portion of the property. The dilapidated structure takes form of the natural ground level which slopes to the rear.

BRIEF:
This conversion project is purely my imagination. I will be designing the old and the new structure from scratch. The images posted have been used as references for the design process. I will soon be posting initial concept sketches of the old structure with snippets of its modeling and taking the work progress from there!

Images Source : Internet

Converted entry by Pasqua11

Puente Nuevo, Ronda’s bridge is located in Andalusia in the south of Spain designed by the architect Martín de Aldehuela. It was completed in 1793, after 40 years of construction and after a first catastrophic attempt where 50 builders lost their life.

Built in three stages, the first stage forms the foundation against the bedrock and the first arch, which in turn forms the foundation for the main arch that takes the bridge to a height of 90m. The final stage includes the two top arches and the centre room of about 60 square, which was a prison for bandits and dangerous criminals during the 19th century, and then for political prisoners during the Spanish civil war.

Despite its dimensions, the bridge looks like a natural element of the rock. The material used in the construction, extracted from the bottom of the river gorge, blends with that of the cliff walls achieving a stunning camouflage effect with nature.

Spain is the world’s leading source of the golden juice of the olive fruit, the essence of Mediterranean cuisine. It produces about half the world’s total olive oil, of which about 46% is exported, making Spain the world’s leading olive oil producer and exporter.
More than 350 million olives are grown all over Spain, and in some regions the olive landscape is staggering. This is the case in some parts of Andalusia where extensive olive orchards grow alongside holm and cork oaks on broad plains or alongside green pine forests on mountain slopes, creating a landscape of outstanding beauty and personality.

My starting point for the “Converted” competition is to integrate one of the oldest tradition of agriculture in Spain into a third conception of the Ronda bridge. The project is based on integrating the modern architecture of the farm into one of the most ancient bridges in that area.
Mixing the old raw materials with modern elements such as glass, steel and concrete, the idea is to keep the old functionality of the bridge, connect the old town to the new one, but at the same time keep alive a tradition but in a modern environment. It is a matter of respect for the connection between OLD and NEW.

Converted entry by Mateusz Sum

Hi all !

“technological advancements […] adoption by content creators […] re-evaluation.” I’m going to focus on that part of the brief. Some key words are coming to my mind quickly, a blur, a cacophony of ideas; creating and manufacturing, forging, production, mass production, automation, computing, data, big data, very big data, and then even bigger data, networks and webs, converting and converging, adoption and adaptation, manual, automated, globalized but isolated, shared or owned, monopolized, democratized and decentralized, free or subscription based 😉

Here I am trying to uncover spatial relationships between past, current and future industrial trends, often catalyzed by or bundled into “revolutions”. Especially in the context of generating art, creativity, collaboration and how we, as a collective, use and occupy physical space to perform all those endeavors.

I’m not working with any existing site, as I’m mainly focusing on the meaning of this space and what it may (or may not 😉) convey.

As for technical aspects, in case anybody’s wondering – I am using Unreal Engine + Houdini combo because they love each other and I love them too. Just as much as Substance Suite. RTX is ON, because why not, and so is DLSS, because it’s there and you should use it as well. I think I’m going to stick to CPU lightmass as it gives me better results than GPU lm, at least for now. I am aiming for weekly updates but we will see how it goes, things can get iffy and hairy in UE pretty quickly lol xD

Getting right into it with something between concept ideas and WIP images already:

Converted entry by alexndr_shur

After a long pause, I continue working on my project.
The first thing I needed to do was to build a block model of the building using a photo and the perspective match tool in 3d max. Structurally, the building will be without major changes, but the appearance will change dramatically.