Project Tropical Campus

Project Overview

Project Tropical Campus started with a conversation about what this institutional project in Denver, CO needed to communicate. The answer was 6 carefully planned views, each telling a different part of the design story.

Large tropical educational campus with distinctive perforated brick screen walls, glass curtain walls, elevated ramp entrance, palm trees throughout.

The Challenge

Stakeholder alignment was part of the challenge. Multiple decision-makers had different priorities for what the renders should emphasise, and we had to find compositions that satisfied all of them without diluting any single perspective.

The design language was distinctive — a mix of forms and materials that doesn’t photograph itself. Translating that into a render that feels lived-in rather than clinical took several rounds of material and lighting refinement.

The biggest hurdle was fidelity at scale. With 6 compositions to produce, we couldn’t afford to let quality drift between the first render and the last. Every image needed to feel like it came from the same visual universe.

Our Approach

Landscape and entourage came last but mattered enormously. Trees, people, vehicles, sky — these contextual elements are what make a render feel like a photograph instead of a diagram.

Feedback cycles were structured. We presented renders in context — placed into the marketing layout or presentation deck — so the municipal government could evaluate them as their audience would see them, not as isolated files on a white background.

We ran the first round of test renders at reduced resolution to get quick feedback on composition, materials, and overall mood. This let us catch issues early when changes were cheap, not late when they weren’t.

Material selection was hands-on. We sourced textures from manufacturer libraries and matched them against the specification documents. Where specs were ambiguous, we sent samples to the municipal government for sign-off before rendering.

We leaned on physically-based rendering throughout. Every material — glass, stone, metal, timber — was defined by real-world optical properties. That’s what makes the difference between a render that looks ‘nice’ and one that looks true.

The Result

Delivery took 3-4 weeks from kick-off to final files. The 6-image set now powers the project’s online presence, sales centre displays, and social media content.

If this is the kind of quality you’re after, start a conversation with us. Or explore the full portfolio.