Westin Vacation Club

Vanrooy Design, a hospitality-specialized interior design studio based in Santa Ana, California, engaged NoTriangle Studio to produce a suite of technically precise 3D renderings for the Westin Vacation Club development on East Bay Street in historic Charleston, South Carolina, with Bello Garris as architect of record.

This was not a conventional hotel marketing assignment. The imagery had to integrate directly into an active architectural workflow, supporting design development, client reviews, and formal approvals. Rather than producing visual assets for presentation alone, the rendering process served as a working design-evaluation tool, a way for stakeholders to thoroughly review, question, and validate the design before construction.

The scope covered the full 60,696-square-foot ground-up development: 50 guest rooms across 21 unique layouts, the public and shared amenity spaces, and custom environmental graphics, with interior concepts informed by Charleston's historic Southern character.

Vanrooy Design specializes in highly crafted hospitality and residential environments, translating layered architectural concepts into refined, buildable spaces. Their client, Westin Vacation Club, part of Marriott Vacation Clubs, commissioned the ground-up development for the brand's new urban City Collection portfolio.

The resort rises at 235 East Bay Street, on the corner of North Market Street in the French Quarter, steps from the historic City Market, and folds an 1850s-era building on North Market Street into the finished property. Rooted in Greek Revival and Victorian influences, the design reflects Charleston's romantic historic character, thoughtfully calibrated to meet the operational demands of a contemporary hospitality development and Westin's wellness-oriented global brand standards.

Working directly with architects sets a different bar than hotel marketing visualization. The goal here was not storytelling for sales but precision, continuity, and support for active design decisions. With 21 unique room types, layered material palettes, and custom-designed public spaces, Vanrooy Design needed imagery that was both technically accurate and approval-ready, visuals that could function as design-validation tools rather than standalone marketing assets.

Five demands defined the work:

• 01 Integrating Revit, AutoCAD, and SketchUp without disrupting the design pipeline.
• 02 Managing multiple design revisions to refine materials and FF&E.
• 03 Maintaining technical accuracy across uniquely designed amenity areas and guest-room types.
• 04 Delivering consistent realism across bespoke joinery, lighting styles, and detailed finishes.
• 05 Aligning production timelines with formal client review and approval dates.

In this context, the hotel visualizations went beyond conventional marketing assets and became functional tools that directly influenced the final design and accelerated approvals.

Before modeling began, we worked through everything that defined the project: the design intent presentations, construction documentation, FF&E schedules, CAD drawings, the Revit and SketchUp models, and Westin's brand guidelines. The point was to understand not only how the spaces should look but how they were meant to function, supporting operational flow, brand standards, and approval requirements.

Design information arrived across Revit, SketchUp, and AutoCAD throughout the project, and our pipeline used each platform for its strength. SketchUp supported rapid iteration of interior layouts, FF&E placement, and design detail. Revit and AutoCAD verified spatial logic, dimensions, and architectural intent. All geometry was then consolidated and refined in our production environment, ready for final lighting and material application. Working in the client's native formats kept production moving quickly, held the visuals to the latest design decisions, and reduced approval risk.

Because the visuals were embedded in the approval process, the workflow was structured for refinement: multiple camera views to evaluate spatial hierarchy, progressive material and lighting passes, revision-ready models for efficient updates, scheduled progress reviews, and consolidated feedback cycles. Vanrooy's team could present current, accurate visuals at every client and brand meeting, and decisions kept pace with the design.