Project Tropical Campus — Case Study
Large tropical educational campus with distinctive perforated brick screen walls, glass curtain walls, elevated ramp entrance, palm trees throughout. Warm terracotta brick with concrete structural ele
Client
Mies Design Group
Industry
Institutional Architecture
Objective
Design visualization and marketing collateral for a institutional architecture project in Denver, CO
Deliverables
6 photorealistic exterior renders across aerial, eye-level, low-angle viewpoints
Project Overview
Project Tropical Campus is a institutional architecture project where the stakes were tangible. The Mies Design Group had a design they believed in, a timeline that wasn’t flexible, and an audience that needed to see what this would actually look like before committing.
The Challenge
Several factors made this project demanding. None of them were insurmountable, but together they required careful planning and constant communication.
Consistency across the full gallery was essential. When someone flips through all the images, they should feel like they’re walking through one coherent place — not looking at renders made by different people on different days.
Scale was deceptive in this project. Spaces that look modest in plan felt expansive in three dimensions, and communicating that spatial quality through a flat image required very deliberate camera work.
The material palette was specific and unforgiving. Certain finishes — the way light catches a particular stone, how a timber grain reads at different scales — had to be precise or the entire image would feel off to anyone who knows the real thing.
Our Approach
Landscape and context modelling happened in parallel with the architecture. Trees, ground cover, street furniture, and sky were all custom-built for this project’s specific location and character.
Final delivery was staged. Hero images shipped first for immediate marketing use. The complete gallery followed shortly after, formatted for web, print, and presentation deck use.
Material development was a dedicated phase, not an afterthought. We sourced or created every texture to match the specification documents, testing each one under the project’s target lighting conditions before locking it in.
The 3D model was built methodically from architectural plans, elevations, and sections. We cross-referenced everything to catch discrepancies that could show up as visual errors in the final renders.
Lighting studies came early. We rendered quick test frames at multiple times of day and in multiple weather conditions, then presented options to the Mies Design Group so the mood was locked before we invested in final-quality production.
The Result
What started as a visualization brief became the foundation of the project’s brand identity. The renders are the first thing anyone sees when they encounter Project Tropical Campus — and they’re designed to make that first impression count.
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