Featured here are two renderings I did recently of a proposed housing project for Menlo Park, California. When built, this housing facility will occupy a portion of the Department of Veterans Affairs campus on Willow Road. The architect is VMWP, or Van Meter Williams Pollack of San Francisco, California–and my client. Due to my involvement with VMWP over some 30 years, I was asked to lend my hand in illustrating this building’s design–and most importantly, the landscaping surrounding the building that was envisioned. Two perspective views were requested, both looking at the new structure from Willow Road–one view from the East and one from the West. These are pedestrian eye-level views–viewpoints one would experience while walking, riding, or driving along Willow Road. The Menlo Park community was keenly interested in what they would see from the roadway, especially since the site has been vacant for many years. So change is coming–and they want to be assured that the proper attention is being given to softening the impact of that change. Hopefully not a stark change, but instead, a welcome addition to their neighborhood. As the consultant charged with illustrating the project, I was given the landscape design created by Jett Landscape + Design of Orinda, California. Referring to these drawings, I incorporated the landscape design into the renderings, faithfully showing the plants and trees selected by the landscape architect in their correct locations near the building. Part of the landscape in Menlo Park is the entourage of massive, old growth trees–oaks, pines and redwoods that exist on most building sites. In these illustrations, I actually showed some transparency to these large trees–not realistic, but citing artistic license, I felt this was appropriate–if anything, these renderings diminish the softening effect of the massive grove of existing trees which will remain. These illustrations are hand-drawn and colored in the color pencil technique by Jeffrey Michael George, Architectural Illustration. Jeffrey creates many architectural illustrations for projects located in the San Francisco area, including San Mateo, Palo Alto, Menlo Park, Woodside, Portola Valley, Atherton, & Los Altos Hills.
Recent Comments