Reportage Heights
The Race to Build ‘Next-Level Living’ on the Caspian Coast
Architectural spectacle
Reportage’s latest ambition in Baku unfolds on a shoreline that has become a proving ground for architectural spectacle. Azerbaijan’s capital has spent the past decade recasting its waterfront with state-led confidence: the crystalline Heydar Aliyev Center by Zaha Hadid Architects set the tone, the Flame Towers altered the skyline, and newly engineered islands continue to redraw the coastal outline. Into this evolving tableau, Reportage introduces a trio of curving residential towers positioned beside a crescent-shaped island and a star-like tower that echo the national emblem. The project forms part of the larger Sea Breeze masterplan, a privately developed coastal district combining resort programming, cultural venues, and high-density living. Reportage’s presence here aligns with its rapid international expansion across the UAE, Egypt, Turkey, Morocco and Belarus.
Piecing together a peninsula
The project began under conditions that demanded a kind of cartographic improvisation. “At the beginning we had nothing but a JPG map,” recalls Samer, leader of the Reportage animation team. “Our artists built the entire peninsula out of white boxes, and we started setting cameras on cubes.” As the architecture evolved, so did the puzzle: models arrived from the client, from the architects, and from another visualization studio, each with its own coordinates and assumptions. “We were fixing scales, fixing locations, fixing materials, trying to understand which building went where. Every day a new piece arrived,” adds Emilija. The process sometimes came with strategic liberties; buildings were even shifted for better composition, not out of carelessness, but because the early imagery was intended for a government presentation where clarity and impression mattered more than survey precision. The schedule was tough. Samer recalls it as the first time in his life he set an alarm for 4 AM just to deliver renderings.
An animation built for government and the public
Against this shifting ground, the brief remained admirably clear. Reportage expected a suite of architectural renders and a signature animation capable of operating at multiple levels: a narrative for high-level governmental review, a persuasive tool for permitting, and a marketing asset for future residents. Their refrain was consistent: they wanted the work to feel “next.” A step beyond expectation, a signal of confidence in a rapidly transforming urban district. This guided the animation concept, which unfolded as a sequence of crystalline forms descending through the sky, touching the ground, and resolving into fragments of architecture. The gesture was both metaphor and mechanism: an origin story for the development and a navigational device for the viewer as the camera shifted between exteriors, amenities, and elevated perspectives over the bay.
Asking the right questions
Maintaining direction required a disciplined form of dialogue. With five or more stakeholders on most calls, clarity often depended on asking the right questions at the right moment. As Emilija notes, “we provided a lot of guidance just to help clients express their feelings and determine how to move forward with a version of the project that met the most requirements and perspectives.” Steering the conversations meant clarifying every comment, identifying what mattered for the next phase of delivery, and translating broad impressions into precise adjustments to light, materials, or composition across the eighteen renderings, including aerials, interiors, and eye-level views. It was a process of ensuring that each change was fully resolved and that the visual direction continued to support the project’s larger architectural intent.
Illustrating a broader economic and architectural momentum
The final suite of visualizations and the completed signature animation reflect that balance between adaptation and ambition. The towers’ layered contours catch the coastal light with a softness unusual for developments of this scale, while the animation’s falling-star motif resolves into chairs and sunbeds that settle convincingly into the built environment, each object finding its place in Baku. The plan changed a hundred times, but we still had to land everything on the exact deadline. As part of the Sea Breeze district, a mixed-resort enclave now linked by a growing network of amenities, from wellness centres to schools, the visual narrative supports a development conceived not as a singular building but as a contributing actor in a new coastal urbanity. The result is an expressive portrait of a project positioning itself within a city determined to define the future of its waterfront, while also illustrating the broader economic and architectural momentum that follows Reportage’s expanding footprint.
Project details
Location
Baku, Azerbaijan
Partner
Team
Emilija Morica
Samer Saniour
Dorottya Tóth
Services
Exterior 3D Renderings
Interior 3D Renderings
Signature Animation