SoLa

These were the most expensive homes the developer would bring to this part of the lakefront, many of them destined to be second residences for buyers coming from the city. They were being sold off-plan, two tiers launching together, so the renderings were the product a buyer would judge. And the developer's earlier renderings did not clear the bar: they looked, in the client's words, very basic. For homes at this price point, the furnishings had to feel a great deal more elevated.

The direction was specific, and it was less about the architecture than about everything inside and around it:

• 01Lift the furnishings to the homes’ higher price point: elevated, transitional, and neutral, with restrained accessories and artwork that reads as real art rather than stock.
• 02Pull the Lake Michigan and downtown views into every room, with blinds shown only at the head of the glass so the outlook stayed open.
• 03Light the terraces and rooftops at twilight, the hour the marketing wanted, without letting the interiors behind the glass go dark.
• 04Frame each room to read as large as it is, showing as much of the space as a single image could hold.
• 05Carry one elevated material language across both tiers, since the residences and the townhomes shared the same interior features.

It also had to satisfy a room full of people. The visuals would pass first through the developer's marketing group and then the developer itself, a lot of cooks in the kitchen, so the work had to be right enough to survive several rounds of review without losing the selling season.

With this many decisions to get right and this many people to get them past, the work ran through the studio's staged sequence so nothing expensive was decided by surprise. A 3D model was built from the plans first. Then white-model views, untextured, with the furniture already placed, so the team could lock the camera angles and the composition of every room before a single surface was rendered. A mood board for the finishes and lighting ran in parallel. Only after those were approved did color rendering begin, with feedback gathered round by round on an online review platform, and the animation followed the same path, a white-model storyboard cut first, then the color film.

Working this way meant the hard calls, the furnishing level, the palette, the lighting temperature, were settled with the developer and its marketing team along the way, not argued over once the renders were finished. It also left room to absorb the architecture as it changed: the terrace railings moved from glass to black wrought iron, and the building's brick was carried onto the covered terraces, both resolved inside the model.

The views got the same rigor. Rather than invent the outlook, we worked from the developer's own drone footage of the actual views at the Residence 925 level and from the rooftops, and built the renders around it. For an off-plan buyer who could not yet stand on a terrace, that is what made the lake in every window something to trust.

SoLa launched both tiers together, and the Residence 925 terrace residences and the townhomes shared the same interior features. Rather than treat them as two products, we built them from one elevated, transitional palette: soft grey cabinetry, marble islands, warm wood floors, neutral upholstery, and globe pendants, switched from glass to copper where the townhomes wanted a little more warmth.

The townhomes carry the idea up to their own rooftop decks, each with a built-in grill and an open view to Lake Michigan, the same outdoor-room thinking the residences get on their terraces. Read across the set, the two tiers feel like one coherent address, which is exactly what a buyer choosing between them needed to see.