Recreating the original Bank of England for HP

HP is inviting architects, rendering specialists and architecture enthusiasts to help it recreate history and digitally rebuild Soane’s Bank of England.

It’s an interesting and fairly unusual competition, this one. Using a set of Autodesk Revit models created through a crowdsourcing initiative and curated by architecture giant RAMSA, competition entrants are being invited to render Sir John Soane’s original Bank of England building.

There are six categories to enter, some of which point to Nvidia being one of the partners in the competition: People’s Choice Overall, Best Image Submission, Best Film/Animation Submission, Best Real-Time Submission, Best GPU-based Submission, and finally Historical Accuracy.

The $30,000 prize fund meanwhile includes a fully-loaded HP Z840 Workstation with Nvidia Quadro M6000 professional graphics and a fairly hefty sized amount of other HP and Nvidia kit.

And if you’re wondering why the building causes such a fuss, Soane’s Bank of England was widely considered to be one of the architectural wonders of the age. As the Project Soane website details, “his spectacular use of natural light and mesmerizing effects of scale not only revolutionized the architecture world but his work also culminated in him being knighted by King William IV.”

And, as it says somewhat more darkly, it’s destruction (to build the current edifice) has been “described by some as the greatest architectural crime of the 20th century.”

Submissions can be entered on the HP Soane Project site until 6th June and there is more about it all here.