Lab Assignment 6: Attempting to model the Multicultural House

Multicultural House

For this project, I attempted to recreate a 3D model of the Multicultural House. This building included three cultural houses: CHAI, Casa Del Sol, and Khéya (The Turtles Gather). The total occupancy holds 25 people. While the Multicultural House has been on campus for a year now, I never fully looked at the building. It was shocking to see that it was just one whole building with the three cultural houses. Additionally, I was shocked to see how rectangular the building was. Due to the rectangular structure, I was curious about when it snows and whether or not the snow on top of the roof will affect the building.

From this, these are some images I took of the building: 

“Modeling” the Multicultural House

While taking the pictures was an easy step in my process of recreating the building, I realized that everything else after taking pictures tested my skills with technology. Overall, the process did not unfold as I had hoped. Ideally, I wanted to see a close representation of the Multicultural House. However, I believe that my process will only get better because I believe that the only way I can go when modeling a building is up now.

You can check out my unfortunate attempt of PolyCam here with an embedded HTML and a video:

With PolyCam, you can see that my building flipped upside down after processing the photos I took. Additionally, PolyCam could not process the roof and other parts of the building because I was not able to take pictures of the roof. After processing, I tried to fix the building to be right side up, but I was not able to do so. 

Alongside PolyCam, here is my second attempt at modeling the Multicultural House with MetaShape:

I had a tough time uploading my photos to MetaShape, so I ended up changing my phone to upload JPGs and take new photos. From MetaShape, you can see that the model does not really look like the pictures I took of the Multicultural House. There are some open gaps in the “building”. The overall model looks a little bit like colorful Play-Doh that was smashed together. I am unsure what happened, so I hope to continue to understand how to use MetaShape to fix my first attempt.

Modeling vs. viewing through photos and maps

Attempting to model a building is much harder than simply viewing the building through photographs or maps. I believe the toughest part in modeling a building is getting through all the things an app like PolyCam and MetaShape offers. I feel like if a person is a novice in modeling buildings and working with different applications, it would be extremely difficult to continue and get the outcome they wanted. With my work with PolyCam and MetaShape, I had an extremely difficult time working with everything because I did not understand what each app had to support my vision. However, I believe that if a model of a building is done where you can see everything about the building, viewers can get better insight into all the smaller details that photos and maps cannot capture.

Engaging with the built environment

Thinking about the bright side of my modeling process, I think engaging with the built environment definitely made me very curious about the campus. I feel like being on campus all of the time can make someone miss out on small things that can go unnoticed, like how I did not realize how the Multicultural House really looked like a rectangle. Also, my work with this project has made me think about the importance of this building in encouraging heritage and intercultural life. I think this building ties well with the Office of Intercultural Life and their work with different cultures on campus, as this building is one building with three cultural houses. I feel like the Multicultural House says a lot about how thoughtful the development of this building was with intertwining cultures.