Welcome to CONVERTED, The 9th International Architectural Design & Visualization Challenge I’m running in partnership with Substance by ADOBE as the Material Category Marquee Sponsor and ASUS as our Hardware sponsor.

Converted entry by Shiju NK

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Here is my final entry for “The Phoenix”. This challenge was ofcourse one of the most different and interesting ones I have taken up since it involves designing and visualizing both the old and the new converted structure. The new design revolves around not stripping the ruins of its historic image but at the same time breathing new life into it. The journey that the Smiths are going to step into here on has been depicted in few of the design elements used. To create an interest to the subject, I leave it to the viewer’s imagination to find the connection between the old and the new. Hope you all like it!

Converted entry by Flowstorm

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Summary

Sizewell Nuclear Power Station is located within an ‘Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty’ in Suffolk, UK. There are 3 reactors – “A” has been decommissioned, “B” is operational and “C” is currently planned for the future. I propose to convert all buildings and site into a series of spaces where visitors can learn about rewilding and explore the importance of maintaining Biodiversity on our small planet.

The site is very large so I decided to focus on two main aspects. The first was an area of land immediately to the West of the main buildings where I proposed to re-wild the area by introducing large herbivores and allowing nature to take its path.

To help support and encourage wildlife, I introduced a lake by flooding some of the existing waterways. Around the lake I’ve designed some animal hides based on collage studies I did early in the process. It is here that visitors can join a “Sizewell Safari”group to observe the animals in nature.
My second area of focus was to create a new dramatic entrance to what is now the turbine hall of Sizewell B. This is where visitors will be able to learn about rewilding, biodiversity and book their Safari tickets.

Substance

This was my first use of the Substance suite and I found using Substance Designer made the material creation process fun. I’ve been able to create various bespoke, procedural materials with exposed parameters that have allowed me to re-use the same .sbsar in multiple places.
The most ambitious exploration for me was to create the lake Substance. Using only 1 external input (a hand drawn black & white shape in Photoshop) I was able to create complex displacement, diffuse colour and roughness. In addition I generated various bespoke, editable output masks, that I used as maps to drive Forest Pack Pro. This allowed me to easily explore plant layout options and species distribution by simply adjusting the exposed parameters.
I also managed to create a procedural timber material that was used for all of the timber – the entrance canopy structure and shading fins, the main staircase and the animal hides cladding.
The turbine hall cladding and context buildings also share the same Substance.
Using Substance Alchemist I managed to create new materials very quickly from texture maps I already had – mostly for the hard landscaping.

Photography

All of the animal photos used in the images were taken by myself.
The existing site “Sizewell B” is an active Nuclear Power Station and is therefore secure and hard to access. I therefore had to look online for reference photos. The best ones of the existing site I found were some incredible aerial photos taken by John D Fielding on Flickr. He kindly allowed me to use some of them as reference images.
Boston United Football Club aerial image - their new Jakemans Community Stadium - Lincolnshire UK

Interior reference of the turbine hall used to model the existing structure was from a promotional video on YouTube called “Take a tour of Sizewell B nuclear power station”.

DOWNLOAD LINK TO FINAL IMAGES:
https://we.tl/t-n1KyWAJABH

Converted entry by Rajiv Maleiane

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After a lot of shaping and texturing, the thing seems to take on a presentable image.

Both the conception and the design of the new building express not only the need for the emergence of a ”new” concept, but also the warmth of living souls in the area of ​​influence covered by it. The history of decades of historical and cultural development of a people is also felt in the space, hence the need to design buildings with details whose stories penetrate the soul.
I would like to work more in the surroundings, but I’m out of time. I preferred to use daylight because it is very easy to be calculated by the Pc and presents more realistic results besides the city being characteristically defined by a more tropical climate, the daytime images express this more. I really like the sketch effect, so I used the Photoshop filter to get a similar effect.

I hope that one day the museum will undergo an architectural intervention, be it rehabilitation, remodeling or restoration, as it preserves much of the history of Mozambique, especially the culture of the northern region, adorned in its tiny artifacts and exquisite in the eyes of the people of Nampula.

I am immensely grateful to the organizers of the challenge, it is the first time that I have participated in something similar, and the experience was very good, with more to come.
Good luck to everyone!

Converted entry by Osvaldo da silva

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The expression of this Architecture, translated not only the teachings of Le Corbusier’s letter of attention, but also the Modern forms developed in Brazil, the greatest representatives of the modern movement in Angola were the architects Vasco Viera da Costa and Simão de Carvalho, who having being a pupil of Le Corbuier, they had in Angola the space for experimenting with movement, creating rational and functional buildings with well-defined geometric shapes and lack of sense of purpose.

The buildings It is located in Angola on the African continent in the city of Luanda, due to my higher education in architecture, I love to see the modern old buildings and it gives a new function to maintain the same function or even maintain the same function. My country does not know how to treat and value these buildings which + is a great masterpiece on earth. And I always try to show with my art as much as the old buildings can gain a new life and value the work of great architects such as Vasco Viera da Costa and Simão de carvalho.

Converted entry by Tolu Sanusi

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The 3 images tell the story of breathing life into the old, experencing the new and a moment in time. It would be a really great if this historical gem is put to use again as a centre of knowledge for the youth and that is what prompted the building choice. The different scenes have have a different feel and story, reflecting the environment, scenery and users.

The first image captures a wet evening in June right in the thick of rainy season. The rain just drizzled to a stop, just in time for sunset as it settles on the horizon underneath dark rain clouds washing the sky in rich hues of violet. My inspiration for this scene is a hobby i have of photographing sunset and the unique feel of a sunset just after the rain is what i wanted to recreate.

The second image is at dawn, the city wakes to a cloudless warm tropical sunrise. People dashing to work, the project is in a relatively quiet area for city centre and the render is visualises a quiet morning. I have walked this location in the early hours of the day and noted how serene it felt even though is located in the Central Business district, and that feeling was what i was inspired by.

The last image is what i hope to see in future, a young lady reading in the late afternoon sun of her heritage and learning new ways of thinking and doing things. We are in need of idea incubators and spaces to grow and learn more about our history, this scene is more of a hopeful future where this becomes a reality.

Converted entry by Iryna Nalyvaiko

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My entry for the “Converted” 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.

For my project I didn’t choose one specific building. My project will emphasize the common features of these churches.
My renovation has 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. However, this building can only exist in the form of digital art.

In this project I focused on the interior as well as sculpture, which is the main exhibit. My goal was to make the installation organic in its shapes, as well as contrasting with the classic architectural forms. As a material I used beads – this way I refer to the traditional local art.

Hope you like my project and I’ll be happy to hear your comments and suggestions.
Good luck to all participants of the challenge and many thanks to Ronen for organizing such an inspiring challenge! 🙂