Construction/Design --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
New Design Technology Offers
Great Marketing Tool
Gravitas Design Studio of Houston, TX is using a high-tech new method of architectural
imaging that is being called “virtual visualization.”
Instead of traditional renderings or elevations of proposed projects, Gravitas provides a
photo-realistic image of how a project will look in real life. The technique has resulted
from a proprietary merging of in-house and on-the-market computer programming.
The company can create images from verbally-expressed ideas or from existing design
drawings. While the images can be reproduced on paper to simulate photographs, they can
also be digitally formatted on computer disks, allowing the viewer a totally virtual
experience.
The process costs about the same as the production of original renderings. But its chief
benefit is that it is usually quicker to do, especially when changes need to be made.
Often it allows planners to play “what if” when trying to refine the plans for a
project. “It accelerates the design process,” says Marcus Moorehead of Gravitas.
“In a way, it allows testing the design of a building before it is built.”
With a full team of architects and designers, Gravitas can develop a design from concept,
but Moorehead says that many developers are coming in with pre-drawn plans and hiring his
company to produce lifelike photographs of a project or to create virtual brochures on a
cd, which he says are great tools when marketing a project to financers, tenants or to
local authorities. “It provides the “Wow,” a comprehensive understanding of
the idea,” says Moorehead. “People can really see it. Financiers and leasers
don’t understand two-dimensional elevations. But in 3-D, they can relate.”
Contact information: Marcus Moorehead, Gravitas Incorporated 713-520-1030
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Working with Hermes Reed Architects of
Houston, Gravitas’ new virtual
visualization
technology
produced this lifelike rendering of Portofino,
being developed in Woodland, Texas.