Finished a study of Bolivian architect Freddy Manami's work in UE5 recently. I don't think the end result was particularly successful but I learned a lot and figured some people here might find it interesting.
I'm always looking for optimistic future architecture that doesn't draw from the Disney World of Tomorrow or Zaha Hadid-ish corporate minimalism tropes, which is a fascinating and complex topic in itself but that's for another time.
The piece shows a single city street but the idea is these these Manami-esc sensibilities have been extrapolated to an entire city. Maybe there's an inherent contradiction in interpreting a hyper-specific language at a scale it wasn't intended to support. Does the impact come from the singular-ness of the disruption? Like a crashed spaceship or a colorful fungus growing on a log. The detail and color are overwhelming. Or maybe austere conventions around ornamentation are holding back weirder, more vibrant, more human cities.
From an execution standpoint, I tried to model bits of the facade modularly to mixed results. This limited how specific I was able to get with a reasonably-sized kit. Were I to re-do this project I'd either make more buildings by hand or lean hard into procedural geometry, it would make a fun Houdini project.
What struck me at the end of all this is how meticulously proportioned Manami's shapes are and the ingenious ways textile patterns are adapted into functional sculpture. It's that kind of cross-historical, cross-medium inspiration that caught my attention in the first place.

