Micha Grundman, MD, AYA Experience
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AYA’s advanced technology is providing its clients a new way to buy, sell and experience architecture
AYA is broken down into two divisions: Experience and Communications. Each division draws upon different sets of skills depending on the specifications of the project. Put simply, the former provides an emotive way to experience a brand, while the latter provides the means by which that experience is communicated to the public.
In a nutshell, the Dubai-based company—which began as an advertising & communications agency in Montreal in 2002—has become one of the region’s most sought after firms for architects and developers looking to package, market and sell their projects.
Drawing on the creative pulse of its birthplace, AYA enjoys exclusive partnerships with Montreal’s Alpha Vision Studio, pure and Meduzarts. Without delving too deeply into the group’s intricate corporate structure, the Alpha Vision Group is made up of world-class CGI artists and technicians and is leader in creating high-end imagery for real estate marketing; pure is made up of architects and designers and is a smaller boutique design studio specialising in ultra-premium photo-real imagery; Meduzarts is the group’s cinema division—which was created with Jesse Veilleux, an award-winning matte painter—that was created to attract Hollywood-quality talent to architectural projects.
While AYA is the face of the partnership in the Middle East, it has the authority to speak for the Group within the region, and more importantly, to harness the Group’s myriad skills and resources for its clients.
“We often show our cinematic projects to potential clients, whether they’re architects or developers, because we apply a lot of the techniques reserved for cinema in what we provide them,” explains Micha Grundman, managing director of AYA Experience. “Whether its matte painting, camera projection or concept art, using cinematic techniques gives us an advantage by creating something that doesn’t exist and giving it the emotion it needs to be authentic.”
Fadi Abu Ghali, managing director of AYA Communications explains the capabilities of the communications side of the business: “The best way to understand it is if you take a developer for example. We tell them, ‘We’re going to develop your brand for a project. We’ll develop all your renderings and animation for the projects too. From the renderings, we’re going to start developing the advertising and communications to complement the brand. Then, we’ll help you launch the project by doing a large VIP event, during which, your guests will be allowed to experience and immerse themselves in the project in a way that is unparalleled.”
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Offering what clients need
Because it is headquartered locally, one of AYA’s biggest advantages is that it can offer regional clients local project management. Everything related to project management is done in the Middle East, which means all of those CAD files, finishing schedules, colour and point-of-view reviews that are necessary for a large-scale project are only a short drive, flight or phone call away.
“It’s crucial to our clients that we transmit the essence of their brand,” explains Grundman. To that end, AYA provides a selection of programs to help its clients achieve a higher ROI on the technology investment. The Group offers what it calls a ‘Digital Sales Assistant’, which is a software platform that packages all of the assets—renderings, animations, corporate profiles, corporate videos, 3D floorplans, 2D floorplans, project-specific sales information—and allows developers and architects to engage with potential buyers.
“When we go in, we go in as an integrated experiential communications company,” continues Grundman. “Even if we only end up providing renderings and animations in the end, we have a broad understanding of branding, sales process, communications, advertising and so on.”
Grundman, Abu Ghali and executive creative director, Kal Dreisziger, often emphasize the importance of listening to clients’ needs and providing bespoke solutions. “We wouldn’t necessarily produce a highly-detailed image for an architect in the first round of concept stage,” explains Dreisziger. “It doesn’t make sense to create a photo-real rendering when the design is still in progress, the details haven’t been defined yet or the image is intended for internal use. It completely depends on what stage they’re at and what they’d like to use the imagery for.”
How good are they?
The likely question brewing in readers’ minds is probably some variation of ‘So, just how good are these guys?’ For a group that provided portions of imagery for visually arresting films including 300 and Sin City, this is a question that has come to be expected by the AYA directors.
One example of their level of expertise is a well-known image of a chandelier inside one of Dubai Pearl’s luxury apartments that took the CGI industry by storm. “In that chandelier, there are enough polygons to model all of Dubai,” explains Grundman. “The detail in that particular image is truly cutting-edge. There was a tonne of discussion in industry chat rooms when we launched that one.”
In its premium products, the level of photo-realism is so detailed in many cases that the creative teams need to spend a considerable amount of time making the images less perfect. “They’re often too clean, too precise, and because of that, they look unrealistic,” says Grundman.
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