--- title: "HØYDE — Finalist — GENDO 48: Soldagen | Gendo" url: https://gendo.ai/gendo-48/soldagen/winners/h-yde description: "In conversation with Richard Mulamootil, Nimra Butt — Finalist, GENDO 48: Soldagen. Model in Astra, test in Gendo, evaluate the result, then return to the architecture and refine it." lang: en --- Soldagen winners: https://gendo.ai/gendo-48/soldagen/winners GENDO 48: Soldagen — Finalist # HØYDE Richard Mulamootil, Nimra Butt · Mulla Labs Image: HØYDE — GENDO 48: Soldagen board (https://gendo.ai/_assets/marketing/soldagen-entries/08897042-55a8-45cf-8417-bc14e34e28fd.jpg) Open the live design canvas to inspect every prompt, variation and decision. Open canvas (https://gendo.ai/app/project/5e7e2410-73a9-4be4-a0f9-61ccc510656e) Jury comments Kurt Chan: The visuals shared and imagery tested really showcased their work and gave me a strong understanding of their design thinking. I really appreciated how they fully took advantage of all elevations of the site. The imaging and the videos really captured the brutality, cosiness and beauty of the site. One of the key elements of all the images is the use of light, from the gentle framing of a window, to the subtle use of a skylight, the warmth of artificial lighting in a kitchen room, to the beauty of the high place where sunlight penetrates through the clouds for the first time. In conversation > “Model in Astra, test in Gendo, evaluate the result, then return to the architecture and refine it.” > > Richard Mulamootil, Nimra Butt · Mulla Labs 01 ## Tell us about yourself, and what brings you to competitions like this. Richard and Nimra are two members of the Mulla design team, brought together by a shared interest in architecture, visualisation and emerging digital design tools. Both are based in London, United Kingdom. Richard brings experience in architectural lighting, spatial planning and computational design, while Nimra specialises in BIM and architectural technology. Together, their combined expertise reflects a strong interest in exploring how emerging technologies can support and expand the architectural design process. Gendo competitions give us the space to experiment outside the constraints of everyday project work — letting us test ideas quickly, challenge each other's thinking, and explore new ways to combine architecture, digital modelling, visualisation and generative tools. With only four days to develop the proposal, we had to make decisions quickly and build the project around one clear architectural idea. 02 ## What did you design, and what were you trying to communicate? HØYDE, meaning "height", is a bathhouse for Vindstad that uses elevation variation as part of the experience. The proposal grew from one of the site's most unusual qualities. As the sun returns after the polar night, moving higher up the landscape can mean encountering direct sunlight days or even weeks before it reaches the shoreline. At lower levels, you become more embedded within the terrain but remain dependent on indirect daylight. We wanted the architecture to make that change in light and elevation tangible across the project. We imagined the bathhouse as a sequence between the village, rock, water and sky. Warm interiors, cold-water immersion, outdoor bathing, social spaces and quieter moments are distributed through the landscape, with the experience changing as you move between different levels. From the outset, HØYDE was also intended to work as civic infrastructure for the village. The same spaces could support outdoor yoga, a quiet retreat, a gathering for residents or a stopover for people travelling towards Hermannsdalstinden or Bunesstranden. 03 ## How did you approach the timeframe, and where did Gendo fit into the process? With only four days, we built the project around a simple starting point: daylight and elevation. We began by studying the terrain, shoreline, existing settlement and the relationship between sunlight and the surrounding mountains. From there, we tested how to distribute the programme between the water's edge and higher ground. GPT-6 Astra in SketchUp through the Ruby API became central to the modelling process. Instead of resolving the concept first and developing the 3D model afterwards, we used the model continuously to test ideas as they emerged. We used generative AI to model furniture, refine architectural connections, test spatial arrangements, and apply the material palette directly within the model. The workflow moved constantly between modelling, drawing and image-making. Gendo allowed us to test how those decisions might feel under different conditions. Over the weekend, we produced more than 200 visual iterations exploring changes in weather, season, occupation and different moments throughout the project. Together, the two tools created a fast feedback loop between the idea, the model and the experience. 04 ## How has your relationship with Gendo developed? This was our second Gendo competition, so we came into Soldagen with a much clearer idea of how we wanted to use the platform. The main difference was that Gendo became part of the design process itself. We used it throughout the competition to explore weather conditions, seasons, different levels of occupation, material qualities and specific moments within the project. By the end of the competition, the workflow had become quite natural: model in Astra, test in Gendo, evaluate the result, then return to the architecture and refine it. We discarded some experiments, changed others, and eventually selected a few to become the images used to communicate HØYDE. That was probably the biggest change from our first competition. Gendo became a visual design tool that ran alongside the architectural model, rather than something we used only toward the end of the process. 05 ## What does the recognition mean to you, and what would you do differently next time? Being selected as a finalist was incredibly rewarding, especially knowing HØYDE was recognised among such a strong field of submissions. It was particularly rewarding to see that the relationship between landscape, light, community and adaptable use came through clearly enough to resonate with the jury. If we approached the competition again, we would allow more time to communicate the project through the presentation boards. We continued developing the architecture almost until the deadline. Next time, we would dedicate almost a full day to structuring the final boards and creating a clearer visual journey from the earliest ideas through to the resolved proposal. We would still keep the same experimental approach. The intensity of the four days and the constant movement between ideas, modelling and visual testing were a large part of what made the process enjoyable. Previous Soldagen: In the Interval https://gendo.ai/gendo-48/soldagen/winners/soldagen-in-the-interval Next The Journey https://gendo.ai/gendo-48/soldagen/winners/the-journey