This image was part of a first research project last year (2005) which had the purpose to test a new renderer, Next Limit's Maxwell, with a complex architectural model in scale. I reconstructed the whole building by Mies van der Rohe using the published plans which i found in a book about the historical recontruction of this building in Barcelona.
The 3D model was built in formZ, then imported into Lightwave. Here, the scene setup took part. From here, the geometry was sent to the Maxwell application suite, where everything was then rendered. The rendering was a bit grainy and took many hours, but the realism was stunning. What you see as final result had only a few level adjustments and a bit of de-graining in Photoswhop.