desymbol: 6 Years Ago, I Designed A Huge Digital Mural For Rotterdam’s Markthal And It’s Still The Craziest Project In My Career

6 years ago, I got involved in the craziest roller coaster ride of my career so far. I was invited to a pitch for what was supposed to be the largest “mural” in the Netherlands. More specifically, the real estate developer Provast was looking for a design on the round ceiling, like the Sistene Chapel in Rome, in the market hall they were already building. The 40-meter-high Markthal Rotterdam was an uber-ambitious design by Winny Maas from MVRDV, the world-famous architectural bureau in Rotterdam.

9 artists were selected. I was kind of a wild card, but after 2 rounds of competition, I got the phone call of my life—they’d chosen my design! Then, the ride had begun: I signed a contract and had 3 months to complete the job, delivering a 2-soccer-fields-wide 150 dpi digital image. So I gathered a team of 3D experts and friends to help me out.

Everything was crazy and unknown: how do I render such a big image? Such a large image cannot even exist on its own. In the end, the team came up with a plan to render the image in 5 layers from 100 tiles, like a chessboard, on a render farm in New Zealand. I think it was built there for Lord of The Rings.

Anyway, we succeeded and the material was printed on 4,000 aluminum sheets that were mounted on the ceiling. After nearly a year, we could finally see the full result.Our team consisted of Iris Roskam, Michiel van Ieperen, Frank aan de Stegge, and Dustin Kershaw. Mothership Art produced it.

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