My Design Process | Elevations and 3D Renderings
At this point I’ve pretty much exhausted the topic of my design process, so I’ll keep this one short and sweet! Elevations are 2D drawings that illustrate one wall at a time, if it could be completely flattened. They are standard in both architecture and design when it comes to hashing out minor details and balancing what we see on the vertical plane (walls). They are especially helpful when there is any kind of special interior architecture, built-in elements, and when you are designing a kitchen.
While it is nice that they are able to provide a sort of picture of the design for the client, elevations are really for the designer, architect, and contractors. It is like a manual for how things should be built and where they should be placed.
Below are the elevations for the Montebello kitchen. Here we are able to see symmetry, asymmetry, and make key decisions about how we want things to be laid out. I also included standard stock cabinet sizes (they typically come in increments of 3”: 12”, 15”, 18”, 21”, 24”… you get the point).
Next, we have the scullery elevations. They are quite time consuming to produce, so I only recommend them when necessary. Often we will not need one for every wall in the room. For the kitchen we only needed three walls (as well as three drawings of the island, which are not featured here) and for the scullery we only needed two.
Sometimes elevations are enough to convey the design. A handful of people are able to visualize quite well and don’t need to bother with further renderings. However, as I take on more projects, I see the true value in offering 3D renderings as well. In school we were taught (by some very bitter professors) that showing renderings to clients is a mistake because the space will never look exactly the same as the rendering, and they will get very upset when they find this out. This hasn’t yet happened to me. I like to let my clients know that it is still just a representation of the space, no matter how real it may look. So far everyone has been fine with it. In fact, seeing the renderings gets them (and me) even more excited to implement the design. It’s a long, hard road and I think this provides that sense of a light at the end of the tunnel. When you know it’s going to look beautiful, it all feels really worth it!
Without further adieu, here are the renderings for the Montebello kitchen and scullery.
There are a few more I’m still working on - the software for producing these renderings is not cheap and in order for it to be affordable for me I had to purchase the lesser versions. Exasperated doesn’t even begin to describe how they make me feel :)
I hope this series has been helpful for anyone interested in the design process! Of course I’m biased, but I love quick snapshots of a whole project, from start to finish.
Until next time,
Nicki
