Case Study: Planning Visuals for Mixed-Use Developments — VeLa

City Approvals Across Multiple U.S. Markets

VeLa Development engaged NoTriangle Studio to produce planning visuals for architectural projects supporting major mixed-use developments across Tampa, Charlotte, Raleigh, Phoenix, and Kansas City.

Each project involved high-rise towers with significant urban impact, requiring planning boards to clearly understand scale, massing, and integration within dense downtown environments. The priority was not marketing—it was approval.

Objective: Approval-First Visualization

VeLa required visuals that could be reviewed, questioned, and approved by city authorities. The work needed to:

Communicate massing, height, and skyline impact with clarity
Demonstrate compatibility with surrounding neighborhoods
Support zoning, planning, and design review submissions
Align multiple consultants into a single, coherent vision

This called for a visualization partner capable of translating architectural and planning complexity into municipality-ready imagery.

The Challenge

Each city presented different review standards, sensitivities, and approval criteria. Projects involved multiple architects and consultants, real-world urban constraints, and extremely high financial stakes—where delays directly affected financing and construction timelines.

Planning boards required precise, contextual visuals showing:

Street-level experience and pedestrian flow
Traffic corridors and sightlines
Relationship to adjacent buildings and public realm

There was no room for generic imagery or interpretation gaps.

Our Approach

We treated the engagement as a planning visualization exercise, not a rendering task.

Approval-aligned discovery: Each site was analyzed against local zoning, height restrictions, view corridors, and planning board expectations.
Central coordination: We consolidated inputs from architects, engineers, and consultants into unified, consistent 3D assets suitable for public review.
Real-world context: Drone photography was integrated with CGI to accurately reflect existing topography, lighting, and urban scale.
Iterative review support: Visuals were refined through multiple board-review cycles, addressing feedback through clear scenario studies and updates.

The goal was simple: reduce uncertainty and give decision-makers confidence through clarity.

Results

The planning visuals directly supported successful approvals across multiple cities:

Tampa: Two mixed-use towers approved following city council review
Raleigh: $170M mixed-use tower approved near the Marbles Museum
Charlotte: 32-story Uptown tower approved after detailed planning review

In each case, the visuals allowed boards to assess impact accurately and move forward without delay.

Second Phase: From Approval to Pre-Sales & VR Engagement

Following successful municipal approvals, VeLa re-engaged NoTriangle Studio to support the next phase of the development cycle: pre-sales and early leasing. With the architectural scope approved, the focus shifted from planning clarity to commercial communication.

We produced a new set of interior visualizations alongside an interactive VR experience, allowing stakeholders, leasing teams, and prospective residents to explore key units and amenity spaces at human scale—well before construction began. The VR environment enabled clearer understanding of layout, proportions, and livability, supporting internal decision-making as well as early sales conversations.

This phase translated approved architecture into tangible, experiential spaces, reinforcing VeLa’s “attainable luxury” positioning and extending the role of visualization from entitlement support into commercial activation.

Conclusion

This project demonstrates how planning visuals for architectural projects can directly influence the approval trajectory of complex mixed-use developments.

By grounding proposals in real context, aligning visuals with planning criteria, and consolidating multi-team inputs into a single narrative, NoTriangle Studio helped reduce risk at one of the most critical stages of development: city approvals.

The outcome was clear progression—from entitlement to pre-sales—across multiple U.S. markets.