Biosphere Dream

"It IS a birdhouse after all - why not make it fly?"

Alternative link on my YouTube.

The Challenge

In early 2026, ArchiTech Network and D5 launched an architectural visualization competition built around the Biosphere, designed by BIG - Bjarke Ingels Group.

The brief was to create a short film using D5 Render, keeping the original architecture recognizable while exploring its surroundings through lighting, materials, atmosphere, animation and environment.

I found out about the competition quite late, but at a very good moment. I had already been looking into D5 as another tool for my archviz workflow, so the competition became a good excuse to learn it through an actual project.

The Goal

My main tool for real-time visualization has traditionally been Unreal Engine. It gives me a lot of control and works very well for cinematography and previz, but creating architectural environments can involve quite a lot of additional setup.

D5 immediately interested me because of its built-in asset library, vegetation, scattering tools and generally much faster path from an empty scene to something visually usable.

For this project I wanted to test that workflow properly rather than just opening the software and playing with a few scenes.At the same time, I wanted to approach the competition from the part of visualization I am most comfortable with - concept, cinematography and sequence design.

learn D5
push the timeline/camera tools to limits
don't do classic archviz - push the story to surreal scenes

The Story

The concept came directly from the architecture itself.

The project is called Biosphere, its facade is designed around creating habitat for birds, and from certain angles the structure already has something slightly spaceship-like about it.

So I started thinking about what would happen if the whole house could fly.

The initial idea was to move it through different environments and biomes around the planet. I did not want the film to become straight science fiction, so the journey became a dream. So I need to show a person - a woman that goes to sleep at the beginning of the story and wakes up at the end. That also ties to the fact, that the building is a hotel.

That gave me enough freedom to gradually push the idea further, until the Biosphere eventually leaves Earth completely.

So, the tagline would be somehing like this:

"She dreams of the biosphere."

The Journey

The different environments became the basic structure of the film.

Rather than treating them as separate architectural visualizations, I wanted the movement between them to feel like parts of one continuous journey.

The space sequence deliberately pushes the idea further than the previous environments. By that point the dream logic is already established, so leaving the planet felt like a natural ending before returning to reality.

The Cinematography

One of the reasons I enjoyed the project was the opportunity to treat an architectural visualization almost like a short film sequence. Instead of simply presenting the building, the camera needed to communicate movement, scale and speed while still keeping the Biosphere itself readable.

My favorite shot is actually one of the simplest - the close-up of the bird sitting on the edge of the structure while the ocean races underneath.

The timeline and camera animation tools in D5 are pretty limited. Coming from UE5 is a big downgrade and that's why the shots are mostly A to B camera movements and the same goes for the flight path of the house. But that reality comes from the way architecture is presented in traditional archviz - simple camera moves and barely any movement of the objects in the scene. But hey - as Tom Cruise would say - it's a challenge! 😎

Lighting the Biosphere

The large beams of light developed naturally from the flying-house idea.

They helped push the slightly UFO-like character of the structure without having to redesign the architecture itself. They also turned the Biosphere into something close to a moving lighting rig, allowing the building to affect each environment it travelled through.

Placing all those spot lights into the birdhouses in D5...yes, it was a fucking nightmare :)
And because it's a game engine...yes, they flickered like hell :)

Assets & The Scatter Toolset

The biggest advantage for me was speed.

The asset library, vegetation and scattering tools made it possible to build environments very quickly without spending too much time preparing external assets or setting up additional systems.

This is the biggest marketing point for D5 and it fucking shows! Compared to UE5, there is no contest - you can create something usable and nice looking very fast and not think about where to get the assets and how to scatter them quickly using basic logic. Dash plugin is trying to do somehing similar btw.

The Music

I knew that music is going to hold the whole thing together. And it pretty much does 80% of the heavy lifting :)

You can find the track on Envato.

The Edit

The competition rules dictated no complex vfx or visual changes to the renders from D5. So I did just basic edits, fades and speeding up couple of renders for timing purposes. For the slightly enhaced version after the competition was over, I added a subtle color grade. All done in DaVinci Resolve.

The Conclusion

The Biosphere Dream received 2nd place in the ATN x D5 Video Competition.

More importantly for me, the competition did exactly what these challenges are good at - it gave me a reason to learn a new tool while making an actual piece of work.

Huge thanks to ArchiTech Network, D5 Render and BIG - Bjarke Ingels Group for making the competition possible, and to Olly Thomas for organizing it and for all the communication around the event.

I really liked playing around with such a beautiful and iconic design made by a studio I really respect. I would love to make some of the shots into better quality VFX shots, since I think the concept is strong enough to hold it together.

For now I've enhanced some of the frames from the video at least as better quality stills.