A City on Stilts:

Our new brief is to create a city lifted up on stilts. The rich would live above and the poor below. In this case my architectural education forced me to consider some structural stilts that would actually hold the weight of a city. So I originally looked into oil-rig platforms and three-dimentional truss structures. Then i made a series of fast sketches and settled upon an idea:

I took the 3rd sketch and defined it in Photoshop. It is quite industrial looking, suggesting the idea of noise, dirt and smoke. That sketch lead me to the potential idea of a metallurgy city, which would justify the excessive use of meal in a dislocated location.

I was really struggling with drawing environments, especially when they are non-organic, so I found this artist that works in a really brainstorm-y way.  He splits his canvas in 4, and he works on 4 different options communication a different mood or look. He works on them on equal intervals of time and could easily flip between  thus keeping the design flow going. I quite enjoyed this method, definitely works for me.

The upper left image is more 'Lawrence of Arabia'-ish. The 2nd is influenced by the Eiffel tower and it is situated in the midst of an iron mine. The 3rd image is exploring the idea that the stilts from below would be quite intimidating and church-like symbolising the oppression from the rich. And the last  is the original speed-paintng but with smoke, suggesting that the industry is ongoing.  

This image investigates how the slums would interact with the stilts. Maybe people below would try to climb them?