The Mountain City - District Gates

 As I mentioned at the end of my last post, my closer examination of the mountain city begins with an exploration of gate design. I decided to start here because I felt that coming up with an iconic design for a prominent feature such as gateways would be a good way to establish a strong architectural identity on which to base further design work for the city. 

Before we dig into the design work, I've labelled the initial city concept to indicate the placement/function of these gates, for clarity: 

Gates Example

As you can see from the quick annotation above, the gates are situated at the ends of the bridges that extend out from the central platform. They are built from the cliff face and function as entrances to the districts that are carved in behind them. My idea from the start was that they wouldn't really be gates in the sense of movement control infrastructure, but instead more like open, processional archways, since they are already within the bounds of the city.

Design Exploration

I decided to begin by sketching a bunch of simple silhouettes, as my main goal was to create a strong, iconic shape, and I find this is the most effective method for doing so since it allows you to put all other aspects of the design aside until later.

Gate Design Iteration

Reference Material

As you can see from the images in the top right of the spread above, I was drawing from a variety of cultures, namely Achaemenid Persian (Gates of Persepolis), Nabatean (Petra, Jordan), Egyptian (Horus Temple), Roman (Arch of Hadrian, Jerash) and even modern Iranian (Azadi Tower). It might seem a stretch to use Roman and Egyptian inspiration considering my brief of exploring the over looked ancient civilisations of the near east, but there are a few things to consider here. While yes, Egypt is definitely not an under-utilised source of inspiration in popular media, it is still a part of the ancient near east, and hence fits well with the overall themes of this world, so long as I don't draw from it too heavily and overlook my primary inspirations. The Roman Empire is a similarly saturated source of media inspiration, but I would argue that this inspiration is usually west-centric, particularly with the city of Rome itself, and rarely drawn from the Near Eastern portion of the Empire, despite a heavy presence in the region. This is why I chose to also draw from some Roman era near eastern architecture, notably the Arch of Hadrian (Jordan) in this case.

Initial Exploration

I explored a variety of options with my first batch of sketches, ultimately drawing two key takeaways to develop further. First, I especially liked the designs that involved a hexagonal shape language and decided at this point that this would be the unifying motif for the city's architecture, to help give it a separate identity from the other key city. My other takeaway was that I really liked the designs where the actual gateway was dwarfed by a monumental feature. Given that I already planned for the gateway to be large by itself, I figured that incorporating some monument that made it look small by comparison would further amplify the sense of scale and wonder I was after, not to mention the verticality at the core of the city's identity. This monumental feature idea also provides an easy solution to the 'iconic' form I was after.

Monumental Design Iterations

As you can see from the bottom of the spread above, I moved on to a second round of sketches, trying to incorporate these two principle ideas while trying to generate interesting forms. When making these, I was thinking about the presence that structures like obelisks possess, and attempting to convey that in my designs. Design 11 ended up being my favourite because it had the most 'monolithic' feel to it due to the solid, blocky form of its monument compared to some of the others. It also conveys the hexagonal shape language I was after quite clearly, I think.

Design Refinement

Silhouette Refinement and Water Channel Designs

With a base silhouette selected, I first added some subtle refinements to the monument's form, to add a bit of visual interest. I was careful not to go too far with this since the blocky, almost crude simplicity of the design is why I selected it in the first place. I also iterated on the design of the actual gate part of the structure to unify it more with the style of the monument, and to simplify the shape language so that it reads better from a distance and showcases the hexagonal aesthetic more clearly. 

I then experimented with different water channel designs since I wanted the monument to be illuminated by strips of the glowing water, to add to its sense of wonder. I decided to go with with variant 5, as you'll see below.

Colour/Material Render and Turnarounds

Finalised Gate Design Callout

With my design fully established, I wanted to produce a finalised callout in order to mimic a professional concept art brief (above). This meant providing turnarounds for the structure that serve to guide 3D artists when it comes to production, as well as demonstrating colours and materials, which I have done through a perspective render of the gate. In contrast to the blue glazed bricks of the oasis city, I decided to implement the maroon and gold of the brothers' scarves as the predominant colours of this city. This scheme should fit really nicely with the sandstone tones of the surroundings.

Reflection

I am really happy with the content I have showcased in this post as I feel that it's some of the more 'designed' work I have produced. I didn't really have much of a clear idea going into this one, which led to some interesting experimentation and ultimately a pleasing result, in my opinion. As I mentioned in another post, my recent networking with industry professionals made clear to me the importance of iteration and design over polished artworks, and I feel like I'm beginning to really take this onboard. I plan to keep working in this manner for now in order to really work on my design skills - rendering prowess can come at a later stage.

Next Steps

Now that I have this central visual basis in the gate architecture to expand from, I plan to expand outwards and begin looking at the surrounding infrastructure, such as the bridges and the structures embedded into the cliffs that frame these monuments.