/ TOMORROW CHALLENGE 2019 /
GUNNAR ASPLUND’S STOCKHOLM PUBLIC LIBRARY
My idea for this project is about the value of friendship and how it’s lived in the streets. I have imagined a dusk atmosphere when people are leaving the library and they get together with friends. I would like to show how people gather to share a moment in this place. I wanted to transmit the feeling of that moment when people go out on a Friday and they feel hopeful because it is the weekend, I thought that it could be interesting to show people getting together at the restaurant Falafel Kungen and this place becoming a reference point for friends to meet each other there. I noticed that this place fosters activities that are interesting surrounding the main building, my idea is to make this evident with characters that are in the scene in both, exterior and interior views. Each one of these three images is connected through the concept, I wanted to show the moment when people start to live this public space that complements the building.
With the hero and panoramic general view, I wanted to show the complete context, just the way it is done in the movies, where there is a general shot that begins by showing the context where the incidents will happen. I used City Engine to recreate the city and some details that were required for the chosen frame, I did this in a procedural way so that it could be a more agile process. It was important that it could be understood that it is Stockholm, the architecture and some buildings that stand out were downloaded from Google Earth.
I picked this frame because the Sveavägen street takes you to Stockholm’s downtown and in this way it’s connected to the library. I wanted to show also the water in the background. In this view I chose to compose the image with a simple rule of thirds, the library is located in the lower left part of the image and in this way leaving all the upper third free for the sky. For this image, I used a diffuse afternoon lighting in the atmosphere. My intention with this lighting was to create reflections on the rooftops so that people could be located in this specific place.
For doing my exterior view, My intention was to start telling the story. The first thing I did was a sketch in which I defined the composition and the elements that could help to balance the image. I started to look at the models that would relate to the concept, like the Tesla taxis or the Stockholm buses, I organized the shaders so that they could look real. I looked for the road textures and I put some 3D people that make part of the main idea. I decided to model the trees that are at the entrance taking into account that these are very particular. With the frame, I wanted to reinforce the order that was planned for the architecture when it was made, with a symmetric plan and at the same time I wanted to highlight the relationship between the building and its exterior. For this one, I used a twilight lighting that hits the building and gives it shape. The diffuse lighting of the scene helps to understand the things that are happening in the scene but this is in contrast to the artificial light of the commercial area of the first floor. For this one I took advantage of the color of the sky, the commercial floor and the building, and created a triad color palette. In this view, the color reinforces the idea of a blue hour sunset that helps to highlight the commercial activity of restaurants. It also has recently rained with the purpose of bringing out brightness and color from the reflections to make the image more vibrant.
For the interior, I wanted to show a couple of friends who are spending time at the library, My idea was to portray the moment they are leaving the library when it’s already closing which will connect the story with the exterior view. This frame allows me to show the interior, the lobby and the exterior, which is consistent with the idea of showing this interior-exterior relationship. I used artificial lights to give more drama and color without over-exaggerating them.
REFERENCES I picked some of my references so that the characteristics of the building, such as symmetry and classical order, could be potentialized. This helped the composition to acquire depth using various elements in different distances (Cars, trees, people, etc.), it is also useful to understand the image even if the shot is totally frontal. The angle of the camera is totally frontal to show the context and to have a stable organization, for the interior and exterior. As references, I picked two frames from Wes Anderson’s movies, the first one from the Fantastic Mr. Fox movie and the other one from the Grand Budapest Hotel. I also chose a painting by Georgia O’Keeffe that represents perfectly what it was mentioned before. I also picked some references that reflected the moment people live public space being based on the Temple Bar neighborhood in Dublin. Besides I got inspiration from some aerial pictures for my view, taking into account the architecture and the color of the rooftops.
