Caixa Forum, Madrid

By Herzog & de Meuron

Caixa Forum, one of many great works by Herzog & de Meuron. Perhaps the reason why this building was chosen to be modeled up was due to the fact that the juxtaposition of the vertical garden together with a corten steel cladded facade pose as a challenge to explore what the 3D materials editors in Rhino and 3DS Max could offer.

Before venturing into how these materials would unfold whilst being rendered, one must first model up the building to begin with before even thinking of how the materials would be applied.

Step 1

Tracing the plans

Caixa Forum floor plans are hard to come by as they are not as well documented as compared to other famous buildings. Hence I had to make do with very pixelated floor plans and try to be as accurate as possible. The drawings must be scaled up to a 1:1 scale to ensure an easy process in modeling the building. Each floor plans was traced in order to grasp the slight change of size as the building rises. 

The drawn plans are then extracted and exported into Rhino for modeling purposes. 

Section plans are also scaled up to obtain the building height to be modeled in Rhino. 

The plans are imported into rhino as depicted by the images above. 

The plans are stacked up according to floor heights obtained from the scaled section. This method would easily give u a rough idea of how the whole building functions and how each floor is connected. 

Next, a makeshift site model is generated based on information obtained from floor plans. Although the makeshift site model is relatively small, it is quite useful because the Caxia forum has a basement level so with the help of a site model, the basement levels could be easily differentiated. Having this stie model also omits the feeling of seeing a building floating on air. 

The first floor has alot of ceiling variations due to the rectilinear ceiling facades that Caxia Forum is famous for. 

Next, a window module is generated to be arrayed along the walls of the model. 

After the placement of the facade windows, the final piece of the building which is the roof is then placed on top. 

Commands such as boolean, tube, trim, and extrude are essential in the touch up process of the model. 

The site model is then tilted to mimic the existing topography of the Caxia Forum. 

Renderings are done without any light assist or material editor help.