Enscape and Veras in Action: Designing a Community-Approved Penthouse Extension

Summary:

• In February 2023, Marco Iannelli started designing a penthouse extension for the four-dwelling residence he designed seven years earlier.
• The extension had many logistical challenges due to the number of stakeholders, the building site, and sustainability goals.
• Marco used Veras to help him speed up the ideation phase and easily showcase material and design possibilities.
• Enscape brought Marco's designs to life during the design phase, helping with navigating the site, decision-making, and improving communication with non-technical stakeholders.

After graduation, Germany-based architect and BIM coach Marco Iannelli set himself the ultimate first real-world challenge: designing his own home. The small apartment block (or "mehrfamilienhaus" in German) offered the perfect opportunity to apply his training in a professional context. The result was "Villa am Hang" (Villa on the Slope), a sustainable residence comprising four dwellings housing 11 people, and three dogs.

By 2023, after several years of living in the home he designed, Marco and the other Villa am Hang homeowners began exploring the idea of a vertical extension for the building. The proposed addition came with considerations: multiple stakeholders, a complex build site, and sustainability targets. To navigate these challenges, Marco turned to Enscape— a long-time trusted tool in his workflow—and used the opportunity to experiment with Veras, supporting the ideation phase with AI-assisted visualization.

Navigating structure, stakeholders, and the unknown

After speaking with Marco for only a few minutes, he clearly thrives on challenges. Splitting his week between working as Head of BIM at Sonnentag Architektur and as a researcher at Stuttgart Technology University of Applied Sciences would be enough for most people, but Marco also freelances on the side. With that in mind, it makes more sense that his first real-world architect project wasn't just to design his own home, but a residence for four families on a steep site previously deemed unbuildable. Seven years later, Marco was ready to take on phase two of the development: a penthouse extension. 

Much like the original design and build, the new project had no shortage of obstacles. With its embedded tubing and ducting, the existing structure demanded careful spatial planning. "There were a lot of challenges," explains Marco. "I had to design something by using the existing tubes. It was difficult to find ways to go upstairs—and it was really, really important not to destroy the overall design of the house."

In addition, Marco had to navigate the needs and preferences of the ten other residents in the building. Some hesitated to expand the property, and the design had to speak for itself because the group was largely non-technical. Visuals would play a critical role in helping Marco earn their approval.

Finally, with no set timeline for construction, the design needed to be future-proof. Whether they would build the extension in five or fifteen years, it had to remain viable, requiring flexibility in everything from materials to structural planning. 

To navigate these constraints, Marco turned to familiar tools, and explored a new one.

From facade to floorplan: tools that made the difference

By early 2024, when Marco continued designing the extension, AI tools had started making waves in architecture. With all the buzz, it felt like the perfect moment to test one that had caught his eye: Veras. 

Marco began his design process in Vectorworks, as usual, but then turned to Veras as a sort of “co-designer” to explore facade ideas. The extension needed to match the original residence’s sustainability credentials as a KfW Efficiency House 55, while minimizing structural load. Material and visual balance were key. “Veras was inspiring for me,” he says, ”because it can give you a set of variations, let's say 10 variations. You choose two, and then you have another 10 variations of the two sub-variations.” Eventually, all this iterating with Veras helped Marco land on a roof design and a translucent facade that kept the design simple, elegant, and structurally feasible.

With facade options taking shape, Marco shifted focus to the rest of the design. As a long-time Enscape user, he knew it would help him tackle the trickier structural issues. Using Enscape for Mac, he worked in real-time and in perspective to refine the layout and staircase placement, which is where 2D plans fell short. “I solved it by thinking three-dimensionally, especially around the staircase design,” he says. “The inclined roof with an upper light from the north side was key. Without 3D and real-time visualization, I wouldn't have designed it that way.“

With the layout issues resolved, Enscape also helped Marco finalize his plans. “I had several variations,” Marco explains, “but Enscape helped me narrow them down quickly.” 

Combining his familiar workflow with cutting-edge tools enabled Marco to move smoothly from ideation to visualization. With his designs modeled in Vectorworks, evolved using Veras, and brought to life in Enscape, the project was ready to be shared with Marco’s fellow homeowners.

Future-proofed by design (and by tools that adapt)

After using Veras to ideate on the roof and facade material and the plans and renders completed, Marco returned to the Villa am Hang collective to present the proposed penthouse extension. Despite the group being mostly non-technical, the visuals did the heavy lifting. "It helped a lot with communication,” he says. “I didn’t even show plans to stakeholders—just Enscape renderings.”

The high-quality visuals made a big impact. “They all said it's a really nice penthouse. Everyone would like one!” Marco recalls. But while the group appreciated the design, seeing it rendered so clearly in 3D helped them realize they weren’t ready to expand the household to five dwellings.

That could have ended the project, but instead, Marco saw an opportunity to pivot. “We are planning a smaller maisonette version of the penthouse that is connected to the flat underneath it, which is mine,” he says. This alteration keeps Villa am Hang a four-family residence while giving Marco a generous penthouse extension and a larger shared roof terrace for all residents.

Thanks to the flexible tools Marco used throughout the process, adapting the design was straightforward. “The design did not change that much,” he says, explaining the storeroom in the penthouse was removed to integrate a new internal staircase. 

Following the change, the revised architectural concept received positive feedback and individual approvals from the members of the group. And although a formal consensus is pending, the outlook is promising. By adding volume only above Marco’s unit, the updated design preserves the original framework of four households, meeting the key requirement of avoiding a fifth unit.

As for construction? That’s still a work in progress. “I don't know when!” Marco says. “Maybe in five years, maybe in 10 years.” For now, the penthouse extension project is a coherent and feasible development step within the existing residence. Marco is even considering working it in with Eco Box, an ongoing university research project he's working on. "Let's see what the future will bring."

See more of Marco’s experiments with Veras in his architecture-themed art project, Guerilla Diptychon.