The Art of Rendering: Frank Lloyd Wright’s Demolished Buildings Resurrected With 3ds Max and Photoshop

Spanish architect David Romero has brought back to life two missing pieces of architecture by Frank Lloyd Wright through highly detailed visualizations of aged black-and-white photographs.

Using an array of programs including AutoCAD, 3ds Max, V-Ray and Photoshop, Romero recreated old images of the 20th-century architect’s Larkin Administration Building and Rose Pauson House in glorious color renderings. He revives the interiors and exteriors of long-lost projects like these in a series called “Hooked on the Past.”

Larkin Administration Building

Romero managed to flawlessly capture the textured detailing of Wright’s five-story office building for the Larkin Soap Company of Buffalo, New York. Built in 1904, the structure featured a bright, red brick and pink-tinted mortar façade with stained glass windows and lavish exterior ornamentation.

Larkin Administration Building

It was the first fully air-conditioned workplace designed by Wright and featured an open-plan office arranged around a large central atrium and skylight. Romero recreated all the unique details that make the building such an important piece of Wright’s legacy, including the built-in desk furniture, suspended toilet bowls, modern lighting fixtures and gold interior decoration.

Larkin Administration Building

His images bring to light the architects’ surprisingly bright internal program set within a monumental red brick structure. Looking at the visualization, it’s easy to visualize standing stunned inside the massive space.

Larkin Administration Building

Romero also resurrected Wright’s Rose Pauson House, a striking, site-specific residence built in the desert of Phoenix, Arizona. The building was completed in 1942 but burned down a year later when the curtains caught on fire. Very few color photographs of the house remain, and those that do have long faded.

Rose Pauson House

Through his color visualizations, Romero meticulously recreated the modernist house — a horizontal formation made of wood and rock that rose from the hillside, blending into the landscape. He used Marvelous Designer, a 3D rendering tool for fabrics, to visualize the interior including the striped curtains, cushions and rug.

Rose Pauson House

After the fire, the walls and foundations were still in place and the house became a local landmark named Shiprock. The remains were later removed to make way for a street, but the chimney of the house was moved south as a permanent monument to the building and its significance to the Alta Vista subdivision lands.

Rose Pauson House

Romero’s visualizations of the two lost structures feature an uncanny resemblance to their once-built subjects. More than renderings, these images can almost be classified as a new form of architectural photography, one that reveals the detailed beauty of overlooked or demolished structures and brings them back to their former glory.

Rose Pauson House

Images via Hooked on the Past David Romero