Menil Collection Entire Building 3D model

This is the model of the actual Menil Collection building, designed by the great Renzo Piano in collaboration with ARUP engineers, built in 1987, with everything on the plot except the underground level. Especially for those who want to examine in an exhaustive way this complex and very instructive work of architecture.

It was recreated from a combination of archive collection and eyeballing adjustments from tons of visual references. Everything is in real world scale, the building dimensions is roughly 129*50 meters long. The model was made in Sketchup 2020, rendered with Enscape 3.4. The previews are the unaltered renders from the software.

The 3D model is a very precise depiction of the actual project, starting with the iconic roof structure, ideal for filtering sunlight, made of cement leaves and an ingenious metallic truss system - a detailed sample of the structure can be downloaded for free in my products.

Followed by the exterior and interior walls, wooden floors, ground rails, spotlights, ceilings, stairs, windows, basic furniture as well as some Enscape assets like trees and people. For you information, those will not translate well in other software.

The present package contains :

• The SketchUp native files with a light version and a heavy version (2 levels of details for the roof structure)
• Multiple layers and scenes to navigate the file more easily, all Enscape settings saved for each view.
• Folders with the light and heavy components corresponding in case you want to reload/change them
• Textures used (not many)
• Examples of dwg and pdf sections, elevations and axonometric views that are direct exports from the skp file.
• 3dsmax files with same layer management and vray materials with the same textures, as seen in the basic renders in the previews. Files are quite heavy to navigate but all the geometry is there.
• Fbx and dwg exports directly from Sketchup model

The building in this model is empty of any art exhibitions. If you’re interested in that, you can check my Mini Menil Art Gallery, a modular mini version of this museum type of building (walkthrough can be seen in youtube). Both are available in the 'Menil Collection Models' collection.

To learn more about the design of this model, I wrote 2 articles about it on my blog : https://xwarchitecture.com/menil-collection-3d-model/ https://xwarchitecture.com/lessons-from-the-menil-collection-model/