Canoas: recreating the modernist masterpiece
An exploration of a house in harmony with its surroundings
Getting to know Casa das Canoas
Some architectural designs deserve to be revisited time and time again. To be explored from new angles and experienced in different ways. The iconic home of the late Brazilian architect, Oscar Niemeyer, is no exception.
Nestled in the Tijuca Forest near Rio de Janeiro, Casa das Canoas is a masterpiece of modern architecture. Known for its organic shapes and minimalist design, the house’s transparent glass walls, sinuous concrete roof, and decorative granite boulder exist in perfect harmony with each other and the surrounding environment.
The house was famously designed to adapt to the irregularities of the land, rather than the other way around, with Niemeyer showing a preference for curved lines and freeform structures. But it wasn’t just this distinctive design that inspired Adam Ingram (The Lumion Collective) to bring Casa das Canoas to life in Lumion. It was the way in which the house belongs entirely to its environment - the building itself secondary to its primary occupant, nature. These two elements in synchronicity are the constant, and the people who have lived there over time are merely visitors passing through.
The challenge to capture this unity between nature and architecture led to the creation of an original animated featurette in Lumion 2023. With its extensive range of high-quality plant models that can be quickly positioned at an expansive range, Lumion was perfectly placed to take on the project.
Experience the immersive exploration of Casa das Canoas for yourself in this cinematic animation, before delving deeper into the creative process that went into it. Welcome to Canoas.
Blurring boundaries
Completed in 1953, Casa das Canoas was Niemeyer’s family home for twelve years. As both the architect and the client, he was free from restraints when it came to the building’s design.
It was this freedom that allowed Niemeyer to realize his vision of creating a unique, personal home that blurred the boundaries between the built environment and the natural world. Rather than merely build a house in keeping with its surroundings, he sought to embrace the organic beauty of the Brazilian landscape and infuse it into every aspect of his home.
Letting nature in
Niemeyer broke with convention to connect Casa das Canoas to its surrounding environment. He designed the house not just to exist within nature, but to let nature pass through it.
The large rock situated in front of the house - which bursts through the walls and spills into the pool - is allowed to remain exactly where it is, effortlessly linking the external space with the internal.
This consideration of nature is seen again in the choice of materials used. Glass walls allow the house to merge with the tropical jungle behind it and the freeform concrete roof takes inspiration from the rolling landscapes of Brazil.
What may look like accidental design features at first glance, such as the giant rock penetrating the house and the breathtaking views upon entry, are in fact carefully calculated choices. Built on a sloping lot, Niemeyer chose to place the residence’s entrance at the highest point to bring the house, pool, and surrounding forest into view in the most visually pleasing way possible.
This consideration of nature is seen again in the choice of materials used. Glass walls allow the house to merge with the tropical jungle behind it and the freeform concrete roof takes inspiration from the rolling landscapes of Brazil.
What may look like accidental design features at first glance, such as the giant rock penetrating the house and the breathtaking views upon entry, are in fact carefully calculated choices. Built on a sloping lot, Niemeyer chose to place the residence’s entrance at the highest point to bring the house, pool, and surrounding forest into view in the most visually pleasing way possible.
Shaping the landscape in Lumion
With natural scenery such an integral part of Casa das Canoas, recreating the landscape surrounding it required careful consideration. An assortment of 3D nature assets was used to bring the Tijuca Forest to life, including over 2,500 plant and tree models.
The scene’s landscape was divided into three main sections. The first focused on the immediate foliage around the building, which was crafted largely with Lumion's fine-detail nature assets. The second section, which surrounds the house and pool, utilized lower-resolution tree and plant assets to establish a solid base. Beyond that, Lumion's mass and paint placement tools were employed to quickly populate the environment while allowing room for subsequent adjustments.
The wider landscape was created using Lumion's nature library, specifically the canopy cluster models. These models were grouped and duplicated to create vast areas of dense forest canopy for maximum visual impact.
Recreating the famous rock in Lumion involved a combination of scanned assets and creative reworking to ensure it maintained both its authenticity and significance within the overall design.
Rendering in Lumion 2023
By rendering the animated featurette in Lumion 2023, a combination of rasterization and ray tracing techniques could be employed. Maximizing the strengths of both methods allowed for the most visually appealing results.
Rasterization was used for the exterior scenes since it provided maximum creative control over light, shadow, and color interaction. This approach offered both flexibility and artistic freedom.
The interior scenes, on the other hand, demanded a higher level of accuracy in how the lighting and materials behaved. This is where the ray tracing effect took center stage.
Ray tracing provided much more accurate ambient lighting, an essential aspect given the ‘in-shadow’ design of the interior that Niemeyer had intended. The improved bounce lighting and reflections allowed for a darker interior space without the images feeling flat or under-lit, and maximized the way that light and shadow interact with different design elements.
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Interpreting the interior
While the interior of Casa das Canoas was designed to be visually linked to the exterior, it cleverly manages to achieve separation where necessary. With only a sheet of glass and a large rock setting the inside of the house apart from the outside, the ground floor was clearly intended as a public zone. Only when you descend into the basement do you find the more intimate, private living areas.
When visualizing it in Lumion, it was essential to stay true to Niemeyer’s design philosophy of allowing the house to be transparent and the interior to exist in shadow. The interior space presented some interesting opportunities to achieve this, from the deliberate use of lighting to the thoughtfully designed gardens.
The small indoor-outdoor garden that follows the path of the central rock was created using a mixture of Lumion and third-party nature assets. It features plant models, such as the cabbage tree, to match the building's aesthetic, and by lowering them into the mesh and exposing only their canopies, it was possible to create unique arrangements that complement the open and airy atmosphere of the interior.
When it comes to interior decor, Casa das Canoas has seen several phases since Niemeyer’s original design. In re-imagining it, the aim was to seamlessly blend the various styles that have been utilized over the years, whilst ensuring it aligns with Niemeyer’s design principles. This was achieved using custom furniture models that were carefully sourced and created to add a touch of personality and modernity to the minimalist interior. Each furniture item was thoughtfully placed within the space, considering factors such as scale, proportion, and functionality, so as not to impede on the original design ethos.
The featurette also makes intriguing use of lighting in animating the house’s interior. By following a morning-to-evening light cycle, the light that reaches the rooms constantly evolves as it filters through the thousands of surrounding trees. As the sun sets, we see sunlight dance across the walls and furniture, in stark contrast to the soft, shadowy atmosphere revealed earlier in the day when the light is stolen by the tree canopies.
Statues and ornaments are skillfully used in the original building design, personifying the organic curves and shapes that Niemeyer was so fond of. In the animation, these were created by reworking a selection of third-party statue models, ensuring that each piece possessed a unique shape and form that could be brought to life in Lumion.
Unearthing new materials
The materials used to build Casa das Canoas are part of what makes it unique. Niemeyer was an early proponent of the unlimited potential of reinforced concrete, which enabled him to create the exact aesthetic he wanted, including his favored irregular shapes and curves.
Accurately capturing the house’s textures and materials in Lumion was crucial in giving it character and telling its story. Lumion's extensive material library was a valuable resource, with the majority of texturing achieved using the native PBR material workflow. These materials were selected and customized to ensure a cohesive and realistic representation of the building's elements.
In certain cases, additional layers of detail were required to elevate existing textures. This called for the integration of third-party textures, which seamlessly blended with Lumion's materials to create a harmonious visual experience.
Water, a significant element in Casa das Canoas, was given special attention during the animation process. Lumion 2023's improved water material was used to recreate the central garden's pool. By adding layers of debris with custom decals and utilizing the material’s enhanced depth properties, the pool area formed a key part of the scene and complemented the building’s organic shapes.
Telling the story through animation
Creating an architectural animation in Lumion involves more than just portraying a building. It’s about telling the building’s story.
To achieve this, each element of a scene - even inanimate objects - need to be turned into ‘characters’. In Canoas, there are two main characters: the residence and the nature that surrounds it. The animation aims to tell the story of the interplay between them.
To capture this dynamic, harmonious relationship, both wind and time played starring roles. The wind system and wind effect were used to breathe life into the overhanging trees and create the sense of a world in perpetual motion. The effect enabled dancing speckles of light to filter through the canopies and illuminate the surfaces below.
The Canoas story also places emphasis on the element of time to show the house’s battle with nature over the years. Leaves, debris, and grunge decals are scattered throughout the scene establishing visual links between the environment and the building. Moss and lichen gradually consume the hardscaped surfaces, merging them with the natural surroundings. On the rear side of the building, branches defiantly protrude through the metal railing, ignoring any intended boundaries. These minute details show how time facilitates the relationship between the animation’s main characters.
The use of color correction was effective in accentuating the different characters at various points throughout the animation. The house begins bathed in the shaded green hue of the surrounding foliage, which highlights the overwhelming influence nature has on it. As the sun sets, the green is replaced with a warm, golden glow and dramatic shadows cast by the trees. This burst of rich color and saturation reminds the viewer of the constantly evolving nature of the scene’s characters.
Piecing it all together
The Canoas animation was borne out of a desire to visually explore the relationship between the house and its surrounding environment.
While you may be familiar with the residence itself, the featurette takes you on a journey to discover the architectural harmony that exists between the structure and the nature that engulfs it.
The progression of time throughout the video elucidates this relationship. We see that the amount of natural light that reaches the house is dictated by nature, the dense tree canopies only allowing it to penetrate the glass walls at sunset. We see hints of the long-term effects of time in the weathering of stone, the scattering of dead leaves, and the layers of moss and lichen.
Canoas allows us to experience a house that has become a part of the landscape - its natural inhabitants more constant than its human ones.
