6 Years Ago, I Designed A Huge Digital Mural For Rotterdam’s Markthal And It’s Still The Craziest Project In My Career
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6 years ago, I got involved in the craziest roller coaster ride of my career so far. I was invited to a pitch for what was supposed to be the largest “mural” in the Netherlands. More specifically, the real estate developer Provast was looking for a design on the round ceiling, like the Sistene Chapel in Rome, in the market hall they were already building. The 40-meter-high Markthal Rotterdam was an uber-ambitious design by Winny Maas from MVRDV, the world-famous architectural bureau in Rotterdam.
9 artists were selected. I was kind of a wild card, but after 2 rounds of competition, I got the phone call of my life—they’d chosen my design! Then, the ride had begun: I signed a contract and had 3 months to complete the job, delivering a 2-soccer-fields-wide 150 dpi digital image. So I gathered a team of 3D experts and friends to help me out.
Everything was crazy and unknown: how do I render such a big image? Such a large image cannot even exist on its own. In the end, the team came up with a plan to render the image in 5 layers from 100 tiles, like a chessboard, on a render farm in New Zealand. I think it was built there for Lord of The Rings.
Anyway, we succeeded and the material was printed on 4,000 aluminum sheets that were mounted on the ceiling. After nearly a year, we could finally see the full result.Our team consisted of Iris Roskam, Michiel van Ieperen, Frank aan de Stegge, and Dustin Kershaw. Mothership Art produced it.
More info: arnocoenen.eu | Instagram
With a total surface area of 11,000 square meters, “Horn of Plenty” is one of the largest works of art in the world
Image credits: Ossip van Duivenbode
The composition is dubbed “Sistine Chapel of Rotterdam”
Digital image depicts vegetables, fruits, animals, and architectural details, enhanced with special effects
Image credits: Ossip van Duivenbode
Image credits: Ossip van Duivenbode
Image credits: Ossip van Duivenbode
Image credits: Ossip van Duivenbode
Image credits: Ossip van Duivenbode
Image credits: Ossip van Duivenbode
Initial visualization
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I life in Rotterdam, and me and my wife visit the markthal pretty often for the great stores inside. We always enjoy your artwork a lot when having a coffee on one of the terraces inside.
First, I need to find out what a "render farm" in New Zeland may be? To 'render' can mean "cover (stone or brick) with a coat of plaster" but a 'render farm' is a "group of networked computers devoted to rendering images, used typically in the production of computer-animated films". (As in "power costs for a render farm can run to millions of dollars a year"). And "Rendering or image synthesis is the process of generating a photorealistic or non-photorealistic image from a 2D or 3D model by means of a computer program. The resulting image is referred to as the render." I am a Dinosaur!
By the way, stunning! What was the CO2 footprint of it, given the apparent power cost?
This is amazing!!!
I life in Rotterdam, and me and my wife visit the markthal pretty often for the great stores inside. We always enjoy your artwork a lot when having a coffee on one of the terraces inside.
First, I need to find out what a "render farm" in New Zeland may be? To 'render' can mean "cover (stone or brick) with a coat of plaster" but a 'render farm' is a "group of networked computers devoted to rendering images, used typically in the production of computer-animated films". (As in "power costs for a render farm can run to millions of dollars a year"). And "Rendering or image synthesis is the process of generating a photorealistic or non-photorealistic image from a 2D or 3D model by means of a computer program. The resulting image is referred to as the render." I am a Dinosaur!
By the way, stunning! What was the CO2 footprint of it, given the apparent power cost?
This is amazing!!!