The impulse of the project
Tadao Ando is one of those names you always keep hearing, some of his projects I knew well (Bourse de Commerce, Church of the Light, Azuma House) but overall I never really took the time to dive more deeply into his work.
I recently came upon a book of his complete works and seized the occasion to take a longer look at his buildings. When I flipped through all those pages, I thought my god did this guy was active… Look at that ton of different projects, there wasn’t even enough pages to include all of his works. Did he ever sleep ?
Anyway, I found a lot of gems in this book but I clicked on one house in particular, with a simple design and minimalist feeling but a little more open and modern than his classic Azuma House felt to me.
This was the House near Utsubo Park, in Osaka, built in 2010. It was perfect in terms of scale to study, as a way to better understand Ando’s style on a very small project by recreating its 3D model.
A little planning was required before jumping on the computer and start modeling : rethinking of my overall work method and trying to improve it with this project.
My final result
The model was made in sketchup, my favourite drawing CAD software for ‘simple’ architecture, rendered with the Enscape plug in. All files are available here in CG trader.
The renders that best showcase the 3d model of the house are presented below :
Final render on Enscape 3.4 of the Sketchup model 
View from the Back yard 
From the Park with Enscape vegetation 
From the Park with Enscape vegetation North South section cut, the sun is on the right 
The treatment of the genkan, at the entrance of the house 
Openings in the living room, covered this time 
End of guest bedroom on the 1st floor 
Corridor on the second floor 
Horizontal stripes in the second floor office 
Same on the second floor 
Night scene on the second floor terrasse 
Downward view of the back yard 
North Façade street side
Learning about modeling (drawing in Sketchup, rendering in Enscape) while learning about architecture (Ando’s style in details) is the way these exercise projects work for me.
This is also the way it can work for you if you’re looking to learn the same way, using favourite projects of your own references.
Making of the House in Utsubo Park by Ando 3D model
The overall method stays the same than my previous projects, only I try on this one to find ways to be more efficient each step of the process.
The Step by step
- Setting the objective
- Making a reference image library : using Pureref this time
- Drawing the 2D base in Autocad
- Sketchup file set up: units, base image, scale
- Modeling using components and layers
- Making efficient scenes in Sketchup and in Enscape
- Final touches in Sketchup
- Final renders on Enscape
Each step will be described in more details in the following.
1. Setting the objective : recreate the spaces as real as possible 
2. Making the reference image board in PureRef 
3. Drawing the 2D base in Autocad 
4. Sketchup file set up: units, base image, scale 
5. Modeling using components and layers 
6. Making efficient scenes using section cuts 
7. Final touch in Sketchup 8. Final renders on the skp model + Enscape 8. Final renders on the skp model + Enscape
1. Setting the objective
Architecture : getting the measurements with the correct scale to better understand the project. Also, memorizing some of those ‘standard’ measurements. Explore the high level of detail in the custom made furniture or the texture mapping.
Software : getting better renders out of Enscape from Sketchup. Also, improving the workflow in both softwares.
2. Making a reference images library : discovering PureRef
On this project, I started as usual by making a Pinterest board with all the reference I could find on the house. But I then discovered a game changing way of using those references in a software called PureRef.
While I used to open images one by one from the windows explorer to zoom in on the details I needed, PureRef can do the exact same thing, only in a specific environement in which I can organize all my images, without any loss in resolution, and go from one to the other extremely quickly.
With a set up of two working screens, it’s perfect to have the PureRef board on one side and navigate really fast between pictures (like Google street consecutive snapshots for example) and have the CAD software on the other side.
Big improvement here on the workflow with the discovery of this software which is basically free. With a tiny bit of training it saves a ton of time overall.
3. Drawing the 2D base in Autocad
Jpg to dwg
From the pictures I found of the plans and sections, drawing on Autocad only begins after putting those together on paper and doing a cross reading, to make sure how one space connects to another, identify each room.
No exact scale found on those documents (bummer) but there was on on the Google Map plot with the scale there. Checking dimensions on standard elements like door width and wall thickness, I was able to align the jpg floor plans on the right scale in Autocad (with the ALIGN command).
Be precise in the dimensions
Now was the time to really absorb the “real” measurements of the house : room surfaces, wall thickness, floor thickness, opening widths, etc. everything that can be remembered for future projects as reference.
It is crucial then to enter values manually instead of just retracing by sight the jpg lines, to get exact dimensions right down to the centimeter. The concrete wall surrounding the house is 33cm thick, not 33.1247cm. Same goes for every dimension in the building.
When you switch from 2D to 3D in sketchup, having exact round dimensions is indispensable to keep modeling accurately, you’ll have less doubt along the way.
Important to keep organized by layers in Autocad because most of them will transfer into Sketchup afterwards. Use a guideline layer to make sure each floor plan is well on top on another and matches the section cuts. Only save the dwg file for import when everything is cleaned up and ready to go.
4. Sketchup file set up
Pretty basic stuff :
- Units : cm, accuracy .001 cm just in case
- Animations : set to 0 second, otherwise a waste of time
- Layers coming from Autocad to start with, completed along the way with new ones
Time to start importing the Autocad file into sketchup. Align well the floor plans with the world axis of the model. Since it’s a big rectangle, that part is easy.
Then try to overlay each floor plan on top of each other, at the right height differences, using the section rotated 90° to control the levels.
Be sure everything is well connected along each axis before starting to model anything in Sketchup. Using the arrows to snap along the axes is essential at this point.
After that, it is go time.
5. Modeling using components and layers
The use of component here is important not only for every repetitive element (doors, glass windows) but also in general since it allows to name each object right inside Sketchup. Once it gets exported, that is essential not to get mixed up.
When modeling in components, the most efficient way to go for me is to stay on the layer0 while drawing, so that every line and face is on that layer. And only apply the layers like Walls, Windows, Floors, on the components. This way you avoid writing in a layer within an object from another layer (been there) thus taking a lot of time to find your mistake.
Above is a quick overview of the layer organization of my file at the early stages, with a sketchup style that shows them by color which is very useful to distinguish them in a scene.
Making a layer for one floor or the surrounding walls can be useful when you regroup a lot of different components inside them and tag that group with the layer R+1, ROOF, or Wall to hide. Makes it a lot easier to hide them rather than isolating them.
6. Making efficient scenes
The use of scenes is the key to optimize your workflow and why I like drawing in Sketchup so much. For instance, I always create a “Work” scene, that is centered around the element I am currently modeling. I update that scene each time I set up the camera in a way I want to go back to easily.
As for the other scenes, you can always take advantage of the layers being hidden or isolated : let’s say I want to focus on the walls and the floors, I hide all the other layers and then create the scene “Walls & floors” with an axo ensemble view and save the scene. I can in 0 second come back to it whenever I feel like something’s amiss in those elements.
Here are some other nice uses of scenes along the modeling :
First ‘Work’ scene to rise the walls from the dwg import 
Work scene when I’m focusing on the lamps under the ceilings A scene with a section cut to see what’s happening inside the house and checking the stairs 
Set up the master scene of your moneyshot render, helps checking the scale of things 
Align your scene with Pureref image so you can be more precise 
Front facade scene for future render Axo color scene to check if everything is in the right layer, very useful
Besides, since scenes are not definitive, you can always delete some you don’t need, and improve those you do need. Save a shortcut for the “Update scene” command, you’ll use it a lot.
7. Final touches in Sketchup & Enscape
Create Enscape scenes with visual settings
Especially, the scenes that are created out of Enscape after a quick walkthrough of the house are the ones that will be there until the end. In those scenes, not only the camera is important, but also all the visual settings that are changed in Enscape and saved in the sketchup file, such as : sun position, exposition, sunlight value, contrast, etc.
You should save each visual setting attached with the name of that scene to always get the right settings each time you turn on the scene to make a render. Saves you ton of time not to get back on the perfect visual settings from one render to the next before rendering.
Rendering half-way through is in my case a big part of modeling, because some things you can only notice in the render image and not in the modeling viewport.
I like to use the batch rendering tool in Enscape to render a bunch of views at once. Analyze them separately when I’m not modeling and noticing what it is I need, to improve when I get back on modeling and material applying.
Texture Tadao Ando’s famous concrete slab
There was a lot of work here on the texture mapping : finding the right dimensions and the right reference diffuse images. Those had to be fabricated in Photoshop by merging nice textures from Megascans concrete pack and pictures I took from Ando’s Bourse du Commerce projet slabs in real life.
The use of high resolution texture image really showed on the Enscape renders, on another level that any material in the Enscape library.
Besides, the library of assets in Enscape (thank god for those furniture, chairs, people, dog) is what really enriches the model, in the way it blends the objects with great texturing and perfect scale, very quick and easy to use, even on large ensembles like the trees in the park.
All the way till the end you just improve the render by improving the modeling, without doing any post production which I hate. For my main view for instance here is what it went through from start to finish :
First camera set up, the rest is awful at this point 
Some furniture, some textures,a try on vegetation in the back 
Tries on the wall texture, the tree in the back is too huge 
Wall looks better but too dark 
That huge tree is gone, the wall texture needs another touch 
Adjusting exposition and sun rays, finishing green wall 
Lightening the texture, final render
Conclusion
Recreating Tadao Ando’s House in Utsubo Park was very interesting, in a relatively short period of time (around 25 to 30 hours total), even for a small scale project.
I found it really fun to see those very real spaces come to life in 3D piece by piece, having on one screen the pictures of the actual house and on the other the 3D house being built from the ground up with finishing touches to match it.
The project itself is very rich in useful design techniques, all the more from a world class architect. Those architectural lessons learned from the 3D model will be the topic of a specific “Instructive modeling” post here :
>> 10 Lessons from the Ustubo Park House by Tadao Ando.
Workflow
Improvement on the speed of the 3d modeling in Sketchup, great find in the Pureref reference board trick, and overall better quality of render out of Enscape that what I was used to. It’s still nowhere pro Archviz level but it’s okay for the time being. Rome wasn’t built in a day.
Now, on to the next one.