New practice produces architectural visualisations as works of art

[IN 2018, after years of working for various top-tier architectural visualisation studios in central London, two partners – Mihail and Juliana – established Wyrd Tree, their own creative studio to provide a premium artistic service for architects, landscape and urban designers.

What they found is that architecture firms who invest in their brand and would like to separate themselves from the pack are looking for much better quality renders than those the standard market can offer. At the same time, limited budgets usually don't allow them to work with the large studios and they are also looking for a more personalised service with consistent quality and good communication that the big studios simply can't provide.

They decided to combine the best of both worlds and go even further: their quality standards genuinely compete with the best that the market has to offer and they also focus on creating fruitful partnerships through close collaboration and premium communication, instead of the hit-and-run attitude seen so much of in the ‘archvis’ industry.

The aspects many architects wish to evoke, which most outsourced 3D renderers fail to convey, are intangible: an iconic atmosphere, the poetics of light and shadow, a strong sense of character which grounds the project in its particular site. Mihail and Juliana believe that 3D visuals deserve to be treated as works of art, conveying more than the limitations of CAD and BIM software at any given date or release. Wyrd Tree's approach to image making is therefore highly interdisciplinary, drawing inspiration from fields as varied as architectural illustration, classical painting, scenography, mattepainting and even video game concept art.

In their work so far they have been fortunate to assist many architectural studios – several of which are members of the AJ100 – with bespoke imagery for architectural competitions, pitch work, marketing CGI and planning applications. They are experienced in working on a variety of scales and programmes, from residential and commercial to landscape and large-scale urban plans.

In May 2019 Wyrd Tree's visuals accompanied CF Møller's proposal for the extension of the Garden City in Letchworth, nominated one of the four finalists in a competition by RIBA and winner of a World Landscape Award a year later. In 2020 their visuals accompanied AHR's proposal for the Langarth Garden Village, shortlisted in the Construction Excellence South West Awards. This year they have been involved in producing stunning aerial views for several landscape and urban developments in the UK and internationally – most notably for the winning entry of the Re-Imagining Railways design competition by 7N Architects.

The core team is currently based in Leighton Buzzard in Bedfordshire and consists of four members, three of which are trained and practiced architects. They also collaborate with a number of freelancers. With a focus on effective communication, the team members are quite flexible in terms of workflow and turnaround times, often combining the strategies of stand-alone architectural studios with those of project-based in-house 3D visualisation.

The technical expertise employed in producing still or animated imagery includes 3D modelling, texturing and rendering, as well as extensive post-production. They work closely with expert drone photographers and can assist with eye-level site photography themselves.

They like to try out different lighting settings, compositions and camera angles, allowing the client to choose the most impactful option. They also offer a number of fully-rendered drafts before issuing the final high-resolution imagery, allowing space for comments and suggestions of improvement.

When focusing on the atmospheric qualities of a CGI they allocate time for thinking about the scenographic composition of the images: soft transitions between areas in sunlight vs shade, colour grading, the sense of scale given by people, textures and interior activities, the sense of depth given by a subtle haze or fog, as well as the sense of concrete time and place, given by weathered materials, time of the year consistency etc. All those elements combined give the images a haptic, tangible quality, which differentiates them from standard 3D renders. In achieving that character they like to experiment with several software tools or graphic tablets, combining various 2D and 3D techniques.

Wyrd Tree's goal with each project is to escape the routines and mental shortcuts imposed by the limitations of software and look at the architectural design from a new perspective – to capture its essence, understand the particularities of the place and its surroundings, experiencing those to the full and representing that fresh perspective as a standalone digital art piece that will celebrate the new and the existing, hopefully appealing to a wider audience. q