The impulse of the House and Atelier project
Staying with Japanese architecture, I wanted to revisit the iconic House and Atelier Bow Wow, by the Atelier Bow Wow architects. This house was particularly important in my late studies, since I focused on the evolution of architectural house design in the very dense Tokyo area.
Atelier Bow Wow gave the perfect example in 2005 of how to make the most of a very narrow plot of land, by creating a mix of residential/office building that became an inspiration and a reference for decades to come.
As iconic was the graphic representation style associated with Atelier Bow Wow, that allows to better understand the 3D space from a black and white 2D representation.
I stared at those beautiful perspective section cuts for long but never quite took the time to study the house measurements.
Better late than never.
3d model of a physical architecture model
This time, this project will also have the goal of recreating the house as a physical model (and not a realistic one), with the objective to set it up in a virtual gallery, going for a different kind of graphic representation.
Nowadays, with the omnipresence of digital objects, maybe 3d modeling can still play the role of the physical model, which is still great for communicating the spatial characteristics of a project.
The point here is to see how well architecture 3d models could be displayed as physical models in the virtual space, in this case a extracted gallery from my Menil Collection 3d model.
Going from a simple design of one model into a animation render of a gallery featuring it multiple times in multiple forms, that was the challenge.
Overall method and 3D files download links
Here again, we go from a few jpg floor plans and one section to a complete 3d object that is perfect for understanding the spaces once you got it in your hand.
The model of the House and Atelier itself is available for free download here. With the surrounding neighbour buildings and textures, here’s the complete model.
Software used : Autocad, Sketchup and then Unreal Engine 5 for the virtual gallery texturing, lighting, and animation rendering.
Making of House and Atelier Bow Wow 3d model
Getting started on the 3D model
As always, a little planning, reading of the clues I could find about the building : floor plans, perspective section cut, photos, even a walkthrough video, so a lot in this case.
I remodeled the entire House and Atelier Bow wow 3d model in Sketchup, as I like to do, without worrying too much on the render in the beginning.
The house was complexe as it is, especially if you wanted to be precise from one floor to another, and on the special two-side sloping of the roof.
Step-by-Step
Different steps from the usual on the end part, using the Unreal Engine software to get better renders (still and animations) out of my Sketchup base file.
- Setting the objective
- Making a reference image library with Pureref
- Drawing the 2D base in Autocad
- Sketchup file set up: units, base image, scale
- Sketchup Modeling using components and layers
- Making efficient scenes in Sketchup
- Final touches in Sketchup
- Export to Unreal Engine via Datasmith plugin
- Texture materials and cameras set up in Unreal Engine
- Final touches in Unreal Engine
- Final video render in Unreal Engine
I’ll synthetize the steps in a quick gallery of captures of the finished work.
1. Setting the objective : recreate the spaces as real as possible 
1. Reference of the actual house from outside 
1. Entrance bewteen the basement floor and the 1.5 floor 
1. Balcony on the 2.5 Floor 
1. Living Room Area on the 2.5 Floor with a beautiful view on the neighbour’s wall 
1. 3rd Floor with the bedrooms on the left and the stair to the roof 
2. Making the reference image board in PureRef 
2. Another one for physical model references 
3. Drawing the 2D base in Autocad, hard to align the floor plans 
4. Importing Autocad 2D file into Sketchup 
5. Modeling using components and layers 
5. Populating the inside with simple maquette furniture 
5. Making the sloped roof with dents from the asphalt layers 
6. Making efficient scenes using classic views 
6. Making efficient scenes using section cuts and hidden layers 
6. Making efficient scenes using section cuts and hidden layers : unhiding neighbours 
6. Scene of the structure only 
7. Final touch in Sketchup 
8. Importing into Unreal Engine 
9. Texturing and lightinfg, first screenshot (kind of crappy) 
9. Kind of crappy but hey it’s a first 
10. Final render of the fully modeled and textured architecture gallery 
11. Animation render : playing with lights, depth of field and camera movements
For more details about the base methodology you can check out my post about Tadao Ando’s House in Utsubo Park that I modeled in Sketchup using the same process, only this time I didn’t render in Enscape but in Unreal Engine 5.
Physical model – Experimentation with materials
The follwing renders showcase the 3D physical model of House and Atelier Bow Wow. Those were made in Unreal Engine after importing the base file and doing some basic texturing and lighting :
I tried different kinds of materials to make the house stand out even if it is stuck in the middle of a very dense neighborhood of buildings.
The Unreal Engine mountain
The overall modeling of the house wasn’t that hard or long, but the setting of the gallery was the real difficulty here,
Plus, the material and lighting experimentation in Unreal Engine to get somewhat realistic results were very tedious, especially when you’re still at beginner level at this point.
This is like trying to climb a huge mountain from the bottom without knowing the best route.
That being said, the possibilities of graphic representation offered by Unreal are incredible, and this project was the occasion to crack the surface of its potential : realistic lights and materials, even video texture, before global animation and video editing.
Fortunately, here again comes youtube and its tutorial channels to help you get started and unlocked at each difficulty. Follow the ones with the most views and you’ll be fine.
Conclusion
Harder modeling than anticipated
Recreating House and Atelier Bow Wow was incredibly instructive (instructive modeling post coming right up), and harder than I expected. The way all floors and semi-floors interact with each other was hard to replicated with accuracy.
It really shows how precise you need to be when it comes to building in such a narrow space in between buildings.
The drawing workflow and efficient use of Sketchup comes stronger after each project, as it did with this particular one. It’s important to always try to optimize time and efforts in the long run, even if it’s not always easy while in the middle of it.
Playing with the physical model
As with Ando’s Utsubo Park House and Shigeru Ban’s Paper House (whose interiors were less ‘messy’ and easier to model), it was fun to be able to visit the house. Only this time, it was more like having the physical model in front of you and being able to inspect it however you liked, than really being inside of the house.
I chose to keep the 3d model as simple as a physcial model, focus on the dimensions, adding a few maquette textures and modeling the neighbours that give context to the house.
All that was left to do was to make it look as good as possible. The (virtual) architecture exhibition around it was the best way I could think of, and it allowed me to learn new tools along the way like Unreal Engine.
Now, on to the next one,
I do miss museums, so maybe I’ll do another one.