Harmonizing Visuals for Kengo Kuma – A Short Animation by Brick Visual

I have always viewed architectural visualization and architectural photography as two sides of the same coin.  They bookend the architectural representation process, the former being created at the very outset, while the latter wraps up the project’s design and construction journey. 

Recently, a design competition for a new opera house in Shenzhen, China was held, with many of the world’s most renowned architects participating.  French starchitect, Jean Nouvel, came out on top – you can see his winning design here and all of the shortlisted design entries here.

I am always intrigued to see how architects choose to represent their yet unrealized designs.  When browsing through the many submissions, I came across a beautiful, short animation created by Brick Visual for Kengo Kuma’s entry.  The film is outside the standard realm of architectural visualization.  Unlike the more commonplace fly-throughs that are typically created for these types of design competitions, Brick Visual decided to take a much more nuanced approach, stringing together a series of ‘mood shots’ overlaid with a soft musical composition created in-house by Gergely Kis specifically for this project.  In some of the clips, live-action video footage was composited into the scene.  The end result is a short film with an unanticipated sense of mystery and refinement.  This poetic aesthetic lends itself well to Kuma’s design sensibilities and aligns perfectly with his opera house proposal.

If you’d like to know more about Brick Visual’s creative process for the film, you can head over to their website here.