Villa TEO - Time, Space & Oxygen image

Villa TEO - Time, Space & Oxygen Villa TEO is a meta design story - a seven-day fantasy voyage between utopia and a given reality, told by design historian Raymond Guidot and designer Jean-Baptiste Pontecorvo.

Villa TEO is also presented by the designer as a forward-looking project for independent, techno-ecological living space, as interpreted by journalist and critic Gilles de Bure. This illustrated biography also showcases other unusual 3D creations from JB Pontecorvo.

„Creating a tangibly believable 3D world, starting with a few simple polygons, is challenging…", explains Jean-Baptiste. To do so he used Cinema 4D's wide variety of material and lighting tools to achieve the film's realistic look. He wanted to visualize the architecture, interior spaces and other objects in a manner that lets readers dive into the material until they land on an atom particle, as if in a different world. The images also had to match the descriptions that had already been written according to a schematic storyboard.

„I have to say that the intensive training I received at an accredited training center saved me a lot of time in the end", says Jean-Baptiste, who has always met deadlines but never cut corners in doing so. "First, I modeled everything, then created the lighting, followed by the camera setup and finally I created the materials and photo textures. I didn't do a lot of editing in Photoshop - if a few images don't look that realistic they can still have an interesting, poetic style."

Currently the technology for the self-sustaining techno-ecological villa is still under development and the parties involved are negotiating with potential partners for future exhibitions. A business model is currently being developed. One thing is for certain for the designer: In the long term, the Villa TEO will be self-sustaining with zero emissions - or the villa won't be built at all.

Cinema 4D's stability was key for this render-intensive project, which includes 40 pages of large-format images in 300 dpi. Jean-Baptiste was also very impressed by the speed and number of features of Cinema 4D's render engine, as well as by the seamless connectivity between Cinema 4D and ArchiCAD - which turned out to be very useful.

"While working on the project I showed a few of the rendered images to the co-authors of the written content. They were certain that the images had been retouched", continues Jean-Baptiste. "This proved to me that the illusion can be convincing for those outside the field of 3D. Even the printer thought the house had really been built when he saw the images of the villa illuminated in HDRI."

Jean-Baptiste had successfully created a one-of-a-kind universe used to illustrate an entire book. "It took me a long time to find a 3D software that I like and I've finally found it. Without a doubt, Cinema 4D is my software of choice - in particular because if its ease of use."

Studio Pont
©Jean-Baptiste Pontecorvo / Designer