The story of iddqd Studio began in 2012. We were a small team of architects, young and passionate, driven by the same goals and ready to change the world.
We’ve always wanted to be part of the current global architecture somehow. To come up with things that have never been. To innovate, to explore parametric design, to be ahead of the regular.
In our imagination, we’d create buildings, change city landscapes and become the next Bjarke Ingels (all of us at once). We thought it was fascinating: generating ideas that become projects. Beauty of architecture = beauty of idea, isn’t that right.
Visualization: 'The Spiral', a project by BIG (Bjarke Ingels Group), currently under construction in NYC.
A tiny bit idealistic, ready to work hard and to show our utmost creativity.
That desire drove us towards opening an architectural visualization studio. To us, it seemed like the easiest way in, the first step that would lead us to greatness.
The deeper we dived, the sooner we realized that we’ve been imagining a utopia (well, duh).
It became pretty obvious that there was far less creativity in construction than we were ready for. Besides that initial ‘idea phase’ that was so appealing, there were years of waiting, negotiations, planning and patience.
We weren’t excited enough.
We wanted to generate concepts like crazy and to see our projects completed ASAP. It turned out we were those weird guys who actually enjoy deadlines. Do we still stay up at the office eating pizzas at 4 in the morning sometimes? Guilty as charged. And we love every minute of it.
Did we end up disappointed, because things went in a different direction? Far from it.
Somewhere along the way we started appreciating Archviz for what it was and not just as a stepping stone.
What we do now has by far more art in it compared to when we used to do architectural design.
Some people think that architectural visualizations are detailed, accurate interpretations of what the building is going to look like in the future — the closer to reality the better. And that is indeed the approach some studios have. It’s the beauty of the industry: there’s a niche for everyone.
We see things differently. For us, a visualization is more of a vision than an image. It’s something that stays imprinted into your mind even when the image is gone. And this is what we ultimately want to create: artistic visualizations that are hyperreal, that our one-of-a-kind, that are unforgettable.
What we do is try to unravel what the client had in mind and create an illustration that would reveal this concept to others.
In a way, we create virtual worlds in which we encapsulate the architectural future. That’s what we’re doing at iddqd Studio — and to us, it’s pure creativity.
In 5 years in Archviz, we went from n00bs to a goal of working on the most challenging projects in the biz.
We don’t adjust the architecture itself. But isn’t all we see just reflected light? If we change the light ever so slightly, we’ll see things differently.
That’s why we never have to worry about the designs we are to work with. We don’t feel limited by the architectural formalism. Instead, we’re thrilled to always be ready for a challenge — a challenge to our interpretation above all things.
At the end of the day, everything happened in the way we’d never expect. This is one of the greatest things the Studio brought — being able to do something personal while working with the best clients across the globe, who share and appreciate our vision and philosophy.
Great, huh?
Header illustration: 'City Hall' by iddqd Studio.
