Creating A Castle

September 16, 2019

Getting back into Rhino after most of a summer away from the program was a bit of a learning curve but I am mostly happy with the results of my "castle". While I was away for the first class I was thinking about elements of design that I was seeing in Morocco where I was attending a family get together. I attempted to include some architectural elements that I encountered on my trip while also adapting them and including some of my own whimsy.

This is my mom and I standing in front of some really amazing mosaics above a fountain with the classic Moroccan keyhole style arch. I used both the keyhole style arch and a more Gothic style pointed arch off to the sides in my main courtyard building. I had hopped to include some mosaic patterns in my castle but did not have the time to get that far.

I also included some pillars with the lotus pattern capitals that you can see in this photo.

Below are some more examples of mosaic and stucco patterns as well as another example of the keyhole arch.

Below is a plan view of my castle, and some images that include the surrounding landscape that I tried to introduce. I struggled a bit with figuring out how to turn off the visibility of some lines, especially the Isocurve lines but in this view you can see the central dome and hanging apartments from above. Below you can see some of my attempt to create landscape with limited success. I want to figure out how to add texture and a better way to create a landscape. I remember there is a way to modify a surface easily but could not remember the command, so that is added to the list of things to figure out as well!

I wanted to include some landscape because part of my decisions with the "castle" were made in reference to the landscape I was in while thinking of this assignment. The place we were, Dakhla which is known for kitesurfing (we have a ladies of the family reunion every few years where we get together in a place to kitesurf...not always successfully in my case!). The place has amazing consistent wind on a lagoon that is surrounded by the Sahara desert. I included the walls to shield against the wind and stray aggressive dogs and included fountains, the lotus shaped bowls at the front of the central building and the center-top of the wall even though I didn't figure out a good way to represent flowing water. The castle is meant to be built up in front of the lagoon and against the steep dunes/cliffs behind. Below are some photos of the location we were at in Dakhla.

For most of the building of the "castle" I used the trim join and line tools, relying heavily on extrude curve and surface tools. I ran into some troubles with getting the doorways to trim away the openings in the walls and had to recreate a number of the curves. I think the reason was that some of the lines were stretched at one point and did not line up properly with the bottom edge of the wall surfaces. Another issue was with the rail revolve tool that I tried to use to create the 4 radiating domes, it now occurs to me that it might have been better to start with a surface or solid and distort it rather than trying to create an odd shape...something to try anyway. Below are some in progress photos of assembling the central courtyard building.

And some in-progress images of the hanging apartments:

The basic design of the hanging apartment that I stretched and joined together to create some variety.

And finally some images of details and some attempts to include shadow/different forms of rendering. I would like to in future spend some time figuring out how to play with the settings of renderings/views so I can get some better images.