{"id":8305,"date":"2024-12-11T13:44:54","date_gmt":"2024-12-11T18:44:54","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/visualrealms.com\/?p=8305"},"modified":"2025-01-27T15:33:19","modified_gmt":"2025-01-27T20:33:19","slug":"maximum-security-prison","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/visualrealms.com\/index.php\/2024\/12\/11\/maximum-security-prison\/","title":{"rendered":"Maximum Security Prison"},"content":{"rendered":"
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It’s been roughly twenty-seven years since I presented my senior thesis during my fifth year at Cal Poly Pomona’s architecture program.\u00a0 In all of those twenty-seven years, I’ve never forgotten the impact my senior thesis had on my life; from my career, to my knowledge of computer drafting and computer modeling, to even what I was able to accomplish by not sleeping for 72 hours.\u00a0 Most of all, its biggest impact is the itch that I’ve had, all of these years, to better realize what my senior thesis could have looked like in a more realistic way.<\/p>\n

In 1997\/98, computer renderings were cutting edge, especially in architecture school.\u00a0 FormZ ruled the MAC world and students were visualizing their project like never before.\u00a0 I was a PC guy back then, having worked my way through school at an architecture firm, and was an AutoCAD wiz, writing my own scripts, menus, etc., so developing renderings from AutoCAD models was less than smooth for me.\u00a0 Sure, I could whip out a 3D model in AutoCAD all day, but visualizing that 3D CAD file was no small task.\u00a0 I tried everything but computer power was a premium and PC render programs were CPU hogs – long before GPU rendering.\u00a0 Renderings too many days to complete – not an easy process<\/p>\n

The below photo is a picture of me, standing in front of my senior thesis presentation.\u00a0 What you can’t clearly see, is the amazing rendering that is the background to all of the line drawings, floor plans, sections, axons, etc on the boards mounted to the wall.\u00a0 It was groundbreaking… at least for me.<\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t

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I never fully realized, visually, in digital form, what I saw in my mind’s eye for this project.\u00a0 Today, twenty-seven years later, I share some of those visualizations with you and the internet\u2014first, a little bit about the project.<\/p>\n

My thesis was a maximum security prison, located in Death Valley, CA.\u00a0 The concept revolved around how inmates, who were bad enough to be in a max-facility were perceived to be a scar on humanity.\u00a0 Through this lens, I developed a facility that could be viewed as a scar on the earth.\u00a0 The facility was over 3,100 feet long and was recessed into the dry, barren, desert of Death Valley over three stories, approximately 60 feet below the surface.\u00a0 At this depth, the mean temperature was roughly a pleasant 72 degrees Fahrenheit but very dry (more about the dryness later).\u00a0 The facility had its own fire department, urgent care\/hospital, administration, a series of courtrooms, holding cells, visitation rooms, receiving, kitchens, laundry, water filtration facility… the list goes on.\u00a0<\/p>\n

It was a self-supported, max facility in the middle of nowhere, in one of the hottest places on planet Earth.<\/p>\n

The following four floor plans show levels one through three (bottom to top) and a “site plan” view showing what the facility would look like from a drone overhead.\u00a0 The black-looking shapes over the facility are operable shading elements used to cut the direct sunlight into the open-air space below.<\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t

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The following drawing is a section cut through one of the cell blocks. This section illustrates the surrounding earth that encapsulates the facility and serves to insulate it from the dramatic climate above.\u00a0 The central area in the middle, the “courtyard” at Level 1, is situated over a moving body of water.\u00a0 This flowing water serves to move air, cool the space, and provide a level of moisture, as noted previously, that the region doesn’t achieve naturally.\u00a0 To further help the circulation of air, the floor at the Level 1 courtyard is predominantly metal grate. Additionally, the operable shading elements overhead help cut the direct sunlight, preventing injury to those in the open courtyard while also helping to keep the space at a tolerable temperature.<\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t

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You’ll likely also notice some of the line drawing information is in a cyan color.\u00a0 This information was provided to me, last minute, by my dad who was, at the time a civil engineer.\u00a0 He took a stab at some structural information to help make this section appear to be more plausible.<\/p>\n

If you look closely at the photo above, the one of me taken after my thesis presentation, you’ll see a physical model of this same section, (photo left, just in front of me).\u00a0 It shows sand around the concrete structure to represent the earth and was kept in place with a piece of plexiglass and the concrete structure of the facility.\u00a0 By the way, Pour-Stone, the product I used to create the concrete structure, was a product that many of us students used to simulate cast-in-place concrete (CIP).\u00a0 It was a very fine powdery mix created for concrete anchor and patch-type work.\u00a0 I created the formwork and added threaded rods as a rebar surrogate to create the CIP structure that you see in the physical model in the photo.<\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t

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Over the last several years, I’ve revisited this project a few times.\u00a0 In 2011, I took the time to recreate a portion of the project in Revit.\u00a0 This small portion had originally been created in AutoCAD but AutoCAD was no longer relevant for me.\u00a0 In 2014, I added additional details, developed a new understanding of the structure and its support elements, and created a model that would ultimately be revisited a few more times over the years.\u00a0 Finally, after twenty-seven years, I found the time to invest in the visualization of one of my most influential projects.\u00a0 The following three renderings were created using Octane Render, a program I’ve been using for several years now.\u00a0 These days almost every render program is GPU based and Octane is no exception.\u00a0 Having a MAC Studio with its M1 GPU, plus two GTX 970’s in my old render PC helps to push these images out.\u00a0 Yes, it could certainly be a hundred times faster with modern GPU’s but that comes at a very steep price.<\/p>\n

The renderings below represent a very small section of the facility.\u00a0 If you refer back to the floor plans above, the small red rectangle on one of the floor plans represents the portion of the project that is rendered below.\u00a0 All three renderings are looking in the same direction, towards the end of the facility.\u00a0 The first two are interior renderings while the last one is an exterior rendering showing a view from the open courtyard space at level 1.<\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t

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As I rendered these spaces, I realized how only a small amount of light gets down into the caverns of these spaces – even with an open sky above.\u00a0 Obviously, these are just simulations and I suppose that this characteristic has its pros and cons but more than anything, what I find interesting, is that I had never even considered what the lighting would be like this far down.\u00a0 Turns out, these three levels would need a lot of light fixtures, even during the daytime hours.<\/p>\n

If anyone reading this knows someone or who is someone who would like to use my design for the setting of a Netflix\/Amazon\/Apple show, I’d be happy to share more.<\/p>\n

Finally, one detail that I would like to point out is the railing baluster profile.\u00a0 This is a profile that I’ve used on many of my projects over the years, built and not.\u00a0 In some projects the baluster is made from wood, others from steel but always the same profile.\u00a0 Have a look at some of my other renderings, you’ll see it pops up in a few.<\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

It’s been roughly twenty-seven years since I presented my senior thesis during my fifth year at Cal Poly Pomona’s architecture program. In all of those years, I never fully realized what the interiors could have looked like, until now.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":8345,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"image","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[200,199,192,195,191,206,190,201,198,204,189,14,203,205,194,202,193],"class_list":["post-8305","post","type-post","status-publish","format-image","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-renderings-visualization","tag-amazon-prime","tag-apple","tag-architecture","tag-cal-poly-pomona","tag-death-valley","tag-fusion-360","tag-maximum-security-facility","tag-move-location","tag-netflix","tag-octane-render-2024-1","tag-prison","tag-rendering","tag-renderings","tag-revit-2021","tag-senior-thesis","tag-streaming-series-location","tag-underground","post_format-post-format-image"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/visualrealms.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8305","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/visualrealms.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/visualrealms.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/visualrealms.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/visualrealms.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8305"}],"version-history":[{"count":58,"href":"https:\/\/visualrealms.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8305\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8395,"href":"https:\/\/visualrealms.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8305\/revisions\/8395"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/visualrealms.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/8345"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/visualrealms.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8305"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/visualrealms.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8305"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/visualrealms.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8305"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}