Stadiony Polonia Warszawa Final images: part one!

So I have finished sharing all of the construction progress images - it's now time to see the finished product! Looking back at these and it's clear to me that I skimped a lot on post-processing. That was incredibly apparent looking back at the daytime shots - I didn't even bother hiding most of the lighting materials. Oh well.

This update features the first 17 images, with the remaining 16 to be shared soon.

Overhead view of the site and the surroundings.

  

Overhead view showing just the site.

Section plan of the site, looking towards the west.

South elevation

West elevation

North elevation

East elevation

Section plan of the site, looking towards the south.

A view of the commercial building.

Day view from within the commercial building, looking at the stadium.

Night view from the same location.

A view of the club offices, located on the second floor of the main stand.

Day shot of the concourses. This shot is from the eastern stand.

A night view of the concourses. Not too happy about the lighting.

A day view of the stadium from the exterior. As I said in an earlier update, I'm happy with the modernisation of the facade, but the landscaping could have been better.

A night view of the stadium. The lighting helps bring it all together I think.

Stadiony Polonia Warszawa Construction images: part five!

So I never expected to be making this update, but I just found another fifteen images from the very start of the project. I knew I had them somewhere on my computer, but while searching for the original updates, I didn't find them. Here are those images - covering the first two weeks of the project! As you can see, I tried to get the basic structure done very quickly and then worked out the details from there.

July 19: The first day of the project. I literally saw the project brief that morning and decided to do it. I was looking for a break from my Malta International Circuit, and this seemed interesting. The first thing I did after downloading the site model was to model the main stand facade - but if I bothered to actually look at the model layers, that had already been done for me. Following that, I added the pitches to their location in the site. This is the NFL field.

July 19: And this is the football field.

July 20: By this point, I had already decided on the open corporate area above the main stand. This dictated what the height of the main stand would be. So I got to work on the main stand, laying out the basic structure.

July 20: Open corporate boxes being added, as well as the media seating in the centre.

July 21: I changed the seating colour to black and added disabled areas and vomitories.

July 22: A shot of the main stand with the facade behind it. The basic internal structure was starting to be formed - I had lined up the floor inside the stand with the entrance to the stadium.

July 22: Mapping out the corporate boxes on the main stand. I'd already decided on two tiers of corporate boxes. Open corporate box spectators are able to access their boxes through the corporate areas, rather than through the main entrance like the rest of the fans.

July 22: I brought the main stand into the main model. The away stand was modelled rather quickly - it follows the same profile and is the same height as the main stand. This is the football view.

July 22: And this is the NFL view. As you can see - I had only modelled a very basic representation of the roof at this point.

July 23: The eastern stand was modelled - this was originally designed to fit as many seats as possible as I was worried my capacity would be a bit low. It ended up being ~3000 more than the maximum required - go figure!

July 27: I added the corners to the stadium. Originally these were designed to be as big as the stand beside them, but modifications would eventually be made.

July 28: After modelling the home (southern) stand on the same profile as the eastern and realising how much over capacity I was, I started looking at how to reduce the capacity. The design brief called for a holistic design, so I tried to match up the height of the southeastern corner with the main stand. This was inspired by the roof at Children's Mercy Park. To accomplish that, I removed two rows at the midpoint of each bay until I got down to the height of the main stand. I did the same thing at the northern end.

July 29: I started working on the facade, mapping out the form. It was designed to snake around the venue, following the path of the stands inside it.

July 30: A view from the inside of the venue with the facade in place.

Stadiony Polonia Warszawa Construction images: part four!

September 14 - A lot of site detailing work was done today - trees added to the site and all of that. I really liked this rendering - at this point I finally started feeling like I had a good design.

September 15 - the addition of the flags. Quite a nice shot of the grandstand too.

September 15 - An exterior shot of the site. In hindsight, I think I overdid the trees - I wanted to kind of hide the structure but it would have looked a lot better opened up. Oh well.

September 16 - I finally started working on the area in front of the main stand. It stood pretty blank up to this point. This fountain exists presently on the site, and I elected to retain it, minus the statue.

September 16 - the first real view of the facade. I'm really proud of the modernised sides of the facade - I kept the form of the venue. One thing I haven't spoken much about in this series is the corporate areas. Where the large lights are located above the facade is an open corporate area. This sits pretty level with the top of the old facade, and people accessing the site through the elevators on the side are able to walk through there to their corporate box. I am happy with the idea but the execution was ultimately poor on my part. I think it detracts from the facade. I'm also not so happy with the metal covering. It was truer to the original site but I think it looks hideous.

September 16 - inserting the stage with a night lighting test. Relatively happy. Much more pleased with my stage for SDC3 though...

September 21 - so my schedule got a bit busier at this point and I didn't have as much time for final site details and rendering. One thing I did do though was add lights to the supporting beams on the main stand. I think it's a really nice touch and finishes it.

September 21 - more exterior work. I added a ticket office and club museum outside the main gates - the form of this was inspired by a building a few blocks away. To the right of the image you can see the elevator shaft.

September 24 - had a little bit of time to kill so I added a wrestling ring to the site.

September 26 - the final touches are going on the stadium. LED hoardings on pitchside, final roof textures, security cameras and speakers. This is the day shot.

September 26 - and this is the night shot.

September 26 - final touches on the concourse - lights being added and all of that.

September 28 - with the modelling completed, I moved on to the first of the renderings. This is the night version...

September 28 - and the day version.

October 7 - a little bonus for all of you - this is an unused rendering from the project.

Coming soon will be the presentation renders, and I will talk more about aspects of the design and some of the challenges I faced. Then - it's time to do it all again for Bramley Moore Stadium!

Stadiony Polonia Warszawa Construction images: part three!

August 31: Working on the stage. I needed a little break mentally at this point, so I worked on a stage for the venue. It's nothing particularly special, but I enjoyed the lighting effects that it produced. If I rendered it with the new Vray, this could have been so much more impressive.

September 4: Apologies for the dark image. The layout of the site means that the stadium is located on the western side of the site, with a large, open space free on the east. Rather than leave that to go unoccupied, I designed a commercial building to sit on the southeastern corner of the site. The building runs along Bonifraterska and Konwiktorska. The LED strips located along the sides of the building were previously designed to be used as part of the main facade, but I thought they were better suited here.

September 5: The new roofing structure on the main grandstand is installed. It's based on the roofing structure that is presently on the site - I did not intend to replace that. The main support truss is somewhat hidden behind the large advertising boards. You can see the commercial building in the background of the image.

September 6: The same view, but with the new roofing structure on the other stands. You can see the commercial building in the background of the image. Several small improvements were made to the venue at our around this point - fencing was installed around the venue, nets were installed behind the goals, standing rails were installed in the home end.

September 7: I finally fixed the floodlights. I'm much happier with this profile, though I feel I needed more light intensity.

September 7: A quick aerial render showing the shape of the venue and the newer lighting pattern.

September 8: With not long to go until I finalise the project, I started adding the people to the site. This is the view as I did that on the northern end of the main stand.

September 8: And the rest of the venue. There was a little issue with this render - I inserted the people in the wrong spot - if you look at the areas to the right of the aisleways, you'll see what I mean.

September 9: A day render with the crowd in place. It finally looks like a football stadium.

September 9: A night rendering from the same spot.

September 12: At this point, I was starting to think about the smaller details. Here I have installed the guardrails, and the LED hoardings are about to be installed. I also updated the seating pattern on this stand - POLONIA is now included across the stand.

September 14: To give a little bit more life to the home end - a bunch of flags.