This proposal for a futuristic self contained city, located in Fahaheel just outside of Kuwait City, incorporates just about every bit of infrastructure you could dream of, ranging from hotels, retail, and residential units, to leisure facilities, hospitals and educational establishments. The pioneering 32-storey design, which pushes the boundaries of modernism, also features an undercover walkway designed with new technology to keep temperature cool and stretches from one side of the city to the other.
Designhive, an architectural visualisation agency based in Surrey & Central London, was brought on board to create the branding identity of the city and create a series of stills and animations to present to the government of Kuwait and potential investors. The company’s designers, all of which have architectural and interior design backgrounds, developed the visualisations inside 3ds Max using a mixture of information supplied by the original architects including 2D CAD drawings, hand drawn sketches, and 3D concept models. The VRay lighting plug-in was utilised to produce realistic lighting effects. Texture-based mapping was used to reduce the polygon count in animations and speed up render time on its 60 processor render farm.
“It was important for the client that the animations were of the same quality as the stills produced and we achieved this on the project using ‘Combustion’ to composite layers within a sequence of rendered frames,” says Janine Tijou, Director of Designhive. “We also composited the model into live aerial footage using a program called Boujou. We’ve been using this product for the last three or four years and it’s becoming a much sought after commodity in our industry having buildings shown in context.” “It is an honour to have been such an important part of an incredibly pioneering project like Khabary,” concludes Janine. “We revelled in the fact that the requirements of this project pushed us and we rose to the challenge with relish; the end result is one which presents Khabary as a future city with vibrant community and many economic reasons to justify the scheme. It’s a powerful set of dual language animations.
AEC Magazine
Client : Al Dar First Holding
Consultancy Teams : Najeeb Al Humaidhi Engineering – Main consultant Make Places LTD, UK – Master planning Ove Arup, UK – Engineering Consultant Gehl Denmark – Urban Planners Lovejoy, UK – Landscape Architects .
Project Manager :
PROMAN (In association with Mace Itn’l Co.)
Location : Fahaheel – Kuwait
Project Type : Urban Development
Project Brief:
Residential Units
Retail Units
Cinemas
Restaurants
Hotel(s) (4/5 stars classification high rise)
Health Clubs
Mosques
Hospital & associated private clinic(s)
Parking (above and below ground level)
Landscaping and water features