Casa das Canoas with VisualARQ and Lands Design

The Oscar Niemeyer’s masterpiece “Casa das Canoas”, built in 1951 in Rio de Janeiro, has been used as an example to showcase the workflow of using VisualARQ and Lands Design on the same model.

VisualARQ has been used to remodel this project with the VisualARQ parametric architectural objects. Some of them are unique custom design elements such as the windows on the rooms that have been modeled as Rhino blocks, and integrated into VisualARQ window styles using the window from blocks option.

The project also includes complex geometry that has been modeled with Rhino tools, such as the large rock located half of it inside the building and half of it on the outside, bounding part of the exterior pool. Thanks to the VisualARQ’s Subtract solids command, some of the architectural elements (the stair, some walls, the slab…) that collide with that rock, could fit with its shape without losing any parametric properties. You can watch here how this has been achieved with the stair.

After the 3D model was created, all the floor plans, sections, and elevations could be generated with a few clicks using VisualARQ documentation tools.

At this point, Lands Design took over in the modeling process.

Browsing among more than 8000 species, the environment of the house has been populated with a wide variety of small and large tropical plants.

Finally, the project has been rendered with D5 (real-time rendering).

Combining the ease of use of VisualARQ’s architectural objects, the total freedom to model any complex geometry with Rhino tools, and the “ready to render” plant species provided by Lands Design has proven to be an excellent example of how these different tools can be used to provide a “Flexible BIM” workflow and landscape design in the same project.

Check out more images of this project here.