Apartment Complex - Make It Home Submission

In this apartment complex, all the rooms are the same so they can be easily made quickly and put into place when they are needed. Additionally, the building can have more or less floors if needed since the core is also the same for each floor. On top there is a small park where residents can relax as well as garden plots to grow plants or trees. With the growing rise of bicycles and electric scooters, there are dedicated bike racks on both the back and front of the building, and there is a parking lot for residents with cars. This building can be used as a mixed use building with the first floor being used for commercial purposes such as local shops or a grocery store. There is also a field which could have a playground put in place or remain a field.

-3D modelling software of your choice(3DS Max, Blender, Tinker CAD, Revit, etc.)

-3DS Max to render the final project

The location of the building is very important and will influence the building's design. For this building, I chose Staten Island, NY as the location for the building. Staten Island is known as the "Borough of Parks" due to the vast amount of parks and greenery. This building follow this themes by not only having an open field that can support further community projects such as a playground but also having a rooftop garden which can support garden and greenery projects. The building also supports commercial developments with the first floor being available for shops and every floor above it being residential. With the growing popularity of bikes and electric scooters, this building includes many bike racks for both residents and customers. This all blends the building into the trends in Staten Island as well as blending it with the natural landscape as well as promoting economic development and supporting sustainability goals.

First, if you wanted too(like I did), you can find a reference image you can base your building off of as inspiration. After that I started making the frame of the building by outlining how big I want the building and making the frame and outline adapt to it. These are the steps that I took start to finish with this building:

Step 1: Build the base of the building

Step 2: Build the first floor which will be used as a shop to support local economic development

Step 3: Design the cores that will be the middle that will connect to the hallways and residential units and design them to be stackable(elevators and stairs are used). The number of cores will be the number of residential floors you want so it is easily scalable.

Step 4: Design the residential units. They can be the same size but the interiors can also be different and have different layouts for different purposes.

Step 5: Assemble the building using the units which are extremely modular by stacking them on top of each other and putting them side to side.

Step 6: Create the roof which could include things that support local green projects(in this case a garden)

Step 7: Add amenities (such as bike racks in this case) and build roads or paths that connects the building to existing roads.

Step 8(Optional): Create lighting and cameras in the scene if you plan to render the building.

Now that you have your model, you can export the model as an FBX file(like I did) or export as an OBJ file if FBX is not available. Once you open 3DS Max, you can open a new scene from the Architectural Outdoor Template as it provides a flat grass base but also a light which can be easily adjusted based on real world location and time. Then import your model (I used Link FBX) into your scene and adjust the scene and render settings accordingly. Finally, render your scene and if you want to 3D print out a model, you can export as a STL.

This is just some extra details such as a render from EEVEE and Cycles(Render Engines in Blender).