SYMBOLIC ROOTS
UNSW Health Translation Hub - Design Pitch
What is Symbolic Roots?
““Symbolic Roots” is a built from and urban infrastructure design concept that acts as both wayfinding and social intervention. The project consists of the construction of several cylindrical forms in the foyer of the Ground Floor Level of the Health Translation Hub, and an accompanying smartphone application and wall animations.”
On level 2, the project includes a well-being Hub; a multipurpose space that provides respite from the business of the outside and rest of the building.
My Contribution To This Project:
The pitch featured a number of Australian flora as part of the our reoccurring theme of nature. To demonstrate our idea and the possibilities of the imagery that could feature on the wayfinding installations and app, I created a detailed model of the an Australian fern, ready to be rigged an animated.
I went through many iterations of design when creating the fern. I wanted to demonstrate my skillset, aiming to create a very natural and realistic fern.
3D Modelled Fern
I broke the model down into parts when texturing. I referred to a broad spectrum of images to try to get a thorough understanding of a fern in its early stages of growth. my goal was to reproduce the soft and fuzzy look of a fern stem, and the lighter, shinier fresh leaves.
Design Process
Final Product
Rigged and Animated by Jungwon Eom
The fern I created was optimised to be passed on to my team for further production. It had clean topology, and the scene file was clean and each part was correctly labeled for easy identification.
After the team rigged and animated the fern, it was passed back to me for rendering.
Wayfinding App Prototype:
I was in charge of creating a prototype that allowed the team and the board to recongnise the possibilities without narrowing down our idea and boxing it off.
The fern I created earlier in the project was an essenital design element of the app. It demonstrated how we could incorperate Australian flora and nature into all aspects of the design.
Part of the pitch was not only a physical wayfinding structure in the foyer of the Health Translation Hub, but an AR wayfinding smartphone app to go with it.
The Well-Being Hub:
The Well-Being Hub is a quite area with pockets of space for people to take a moment and relax. The area has soft furniture and rounded edges to bring a natural and organic flow to the space. The Well-Being Hub displays looped footage of waterfalls and greenery to tie it into nature.
