London design firm Squint/Opera has been tripping the light fantastic at New YorkÝs world famous Coney Island, where thrill seekers have gathered for over 100 years.
This bright and brash concept for the redevelopment of New YorkÝs Coney Island resort comes with a similarly colourful tag: ýItÝs Blade Runner on acid, and youÝre in drag.¯ A combination of photo-layering and 3D visualisation, the images are the result of London-based design firm Squint/OperaÝs participation in the two-day, intense design workshop ÙImagine ConeyÝ.
Organised by the Municipal Art Society, New York, the idea was to Ùput a spanner in the worksÝ of the cityÝs plan to turn the famous Coney fairground into bland condominiums. The team provided a shot of adrenaline to the usual fairground fodder, working with 3ds Max, Lightwave and a variety of imaging software, aiming to convey the ideas behind the workshop without going into specific design detail. ýThe images were meant to be suggestive not definitive, so we had to strike a delicate balance,¯ says Jules Cocke, co-founder and director of Squint/Opera.
The two-day limit to the working process and the fanciful objectives were clearly different to their usual design process. ýThe images were nearer to storyboard pictures than typical architectural views,¯ says Jules. ýWe created the images during a two-day design workshop, alongside teams of designers, planners, theme park experts and so on, all making it up as we went along. The process was very fluid and experimental.
ýThere were huge round-the-table discussions, with the team deciding what the best ways to express the ideas were. We took lots of photos around the area, and whittled those down to a few shots.¯
These photos provided the background to which 3D artists Nick Taylor and Tim Thornton, could build using 3ds Max and Lightwave respectively.
