There seems to be two camps in terms of representation: people who love silhouettes and people who love people. We’ve all made both, and quickly we seem to put ourselves into one camp or the other. There seems to be very little middle ground. I like people. The starkness of the silhouettes populating the scene give off a coldness, a ghostliness, of a not yet conceived project. It seems to keep a project in another world entirely—a world devoted to the abstraction of the render, pristine with shiny materials and black figures.

Zaha Hadid employs the use of the silhouette, which shouldn’t come as a surprise to anyone who has visited her work. There’s inaccessibility to it, a lack of a connection between the computer rendering and the actual build work. The intangible computer model somehow is translated into a built architecture, but the blatant disrespect of the human experience still evident in the obvious struggle to build the unbuildable. She employs the silhouette with shiny spaceship materials to create a sterile, pristine world.

On the other hand, Archigram conveys scenes that are composed more of people than of architecture. In a sense the people communicate more the interpretation of the architecture rather than the scale. The architecture is more present in the actions and interpretations of the people than the actual build object.

I’m not interested in communicating with clients, which most people say is the reason why
visualization firms such as Luxigon and Labtop employ the use of the person instead of the silhouette. The innocent bystanders who somehow end up in our renderings exhibit their emotions, personality, and style, giving another layer of interpretation for the viewer. Very carefully we curate our renderings to present the people we like, the people we identify with, the people who will interact with our projects the best even just through the fantasy of the 2D rendering. We invite the same people back to the party over and over again.

So what are you, a horse or a zebra?

Trained and tested in the flames of inadequacy, the fertile ashes of destitution provide for the emergence of the ripe succulent — so is the rise of the promoted intern. There’s nothing quite like that point in an architect’s career where they go from being an intern to having...

(visit buildingsatire.com to check your answers)   Aggrenad Hotel Fig 1: Holl, Nelson-Atkins Fig 2: Three-Headed Dog from Harry Potter     Superkilen Fig 1: Etsy Denim Patchwork Quilt Fig 2: Candyland        Prague Library Fig 1: EVE from WALL-E Fig 2: Masked...

Bring the magical atmosphere of a highway-underpass-squatter-encampment into your living room with this 100% recycled aluminum candle holder. This elegant masterpiece comes with a lovingly hand made wax coating at the base; simply heat the bottom of any candle and stick firmly in place. This can...

  please excuse m̶y̶ ̶d̶e̶a̶r̶ ̶a̶u̶n̶t̶ ̶s̶a̶l̶l̶y̶ the font..

Architecture can be a poor, masochistic, and downtrodden profession, but it doesn’t have to be. The truth is we never had to be poor, in fact we probably could have had our choice of occupations, but for whatever reason we’re here. Our short term financial freedom lies in what I (and...

First Place | Adam Longenbach Section Through the Mind of a ProfessorAuthor: Adam LongenbachSchool: Cooper Union, USALevel: M.Arch II “A word in a building, a sentence in a street, a paragraph in a neighborhood: the city is the manipulation of the earth into a collective autobiography of...

Second Place | Benjamin McGrath Beyond Open Doors | A Mother’s Labor of ChoresAuthor: Benjamin McGrathSchool: Virginia Tech, USALevel: 5th Year B.Arch “…And we always knew that it would never be true. It was the fear that kept us from progress, but it was also fear that shaped...

Section Through the New York Sewer SystemAuthor: Tristan VetterSchool: University of Nebraska – Lincoln, USA “This drawing is not a literal representation of the New York sewer system, but a metaphor of New York as a plumbing fixture which is part of the larger sewer system.  A...

Monuments for Memories | Hyper-Real GraveyardAuthor: Dawa Ewan Tshering PrattenSchool: Plymouth University, United KingdomLevel: 4th Year BA “In the year 2054, 50 years after its launch, Facebook is forced to confront the problem of death. Too many of its users are now dead. All their...

Copy Culture | Modern Surrealism as Reproduction by parrhesia Top: Kim's Bin-Jip/ 3-Iron Bottom: Wang Du's The Kiss I must play cynic as I feel it does not take much to be recognized these days. With the proliferation of social media and hyper-journalism, blogs, feeds, fodder, i-this, and...

Associative Allusions | SnarkDaily by Clara   Penzkoferhaus by Peter Haimerl Architektur   Fourth Grace by Will Alsop   National Gallery of Greenland by Bjarke Ingels Group   Drift by Snarkitecture       Fig 1: Malevich Generative Art Fig 2: Misguided PC Souls...

BuildingSatire Etsy Line by Blair New “Do-It-Yourself Style” lampshade kit available on Etsy. BuildingSatire is proud to announce its very own line of products available on Etsy, starting with this stylish and contemporary lampshade. Don’t settle for fakes or cheap imitations...

Having worked at a few offices now, I’d like to share a few recurring characters I’ve noticed.   Goliaths Goliaths are old beasts who have roamed the white halls of the office for years. They are comfortable throwing their weight around knowing there are no known consequences...

Crystallized Agoraphobia | A Spatial Conflict

I like to describe myself as a failure: I dropped out of graduate school and moved to China. There has always been this itch inside of me, a kind of restlessness and dissatisfaction with my experience, education, and abilities that I think I was hoping to fill. In fact, the night before I boarded...

  Linguists have started thinking about things (such as writing dictionaries) descriptively rather than prescriptively. Descriptive linguistics recognizes that there is, “no language in itself… only a throng of dialects, patois, slangs, and specialized languages” [Deleuze...

On a train ride from Beijing to Shanghai, I realized how monotone China seemed to me, or at least Beijing and the area around it. At that moment, I became conscious of the chromatic impressions cities have left on me. Coincidentally during my trip, the Powerstation of Art in Shanghai housed a...

  I just finished reading, “In Praise of Shadows,” by Jun’ichirō Tanizaki and it actually turned out to make some dull moments of my most recent family vacation a lot less dull. But still, less dull does not equate sharpness. At first read I thought Mr. Tanizaki was a...

  Beijing is a dirty place. A few days after I arrived I realized the disgusting ephemerality of this city. You throw your trash out at night, the fairies take it away so you can breath a little easier from 8AM to 2PM, then the gooey tide rises again. It’s really no different than most...

  So the project’s over. Finally. We go out to this new restaurant around the corner for a celebratory meal. The food is “locally sourced” (whatever that means), organic, free-range, all that, and priced to match. Not the most intern-budget friendly option. As I gaze down...

Beginning December 16th and ending January 20th we are holding an international design competition for students. The winner will be awarded a two-week externship at LUXIGON Aloha Jacta Est in Los Angeles. Guidelines: Entrants will choose from the following categories and create a sectional...

Regarding a render.

Now, most of us have stories of pictures taken in the McQueen Exhibit when there was strictly no photography, of backpacks lugged to spend the day as a Cooper Union student, or even of scaffolding climbed at 3AM just to sit on the cold steel frame of the 9/11 site. For those of you who lack such...

We are America | A Call to Action By Jamel Williams On December 11, 2012 www.buidingsatire.com Now that we have made it through the obligatory familial togetherness of the overwhelming uncommercial Thanksgiving holiday, we, as Americans, can finally focus on what matters most. We can now turn our...

Mr. Ingels, we applaud you — for showing us your wardrobe consists of more than a black slim-fit blazer. Perhaps we had you all wrong. Behold, the new face of couture: Waldo the architect. Special thanks to Finn Nørkjær’s Facebook for this gem...

"The sin of an aluminum can was seldom ever greater." By Joseph Varholick On November 28, 2012 Embodied Energy [A Short Story] There once was a time, and it was last Thursday, when an aluminum cylinder was drained of all purpose-giving substance and was then discarded into abysmal darkness...

Fashion ARCHetypes | Sartorial Satire By  Tom Einspahr On November 22, 2012  on Building Satire.com The Minimalist The Minimalist stays clear of color, instead opting to wear only shades of grey. If they must wear colors it must be muted and desaturated. Button up shirts are a must...

Passion and pay don't come easy.   Let’s be REAL | And Don’t Waste My Time By Parrhesia On November 13, 2012 on Building Satire.com   To all my struggling brothers and sisters out there, this one’s for you. Dear Management, I’m typically not one to complain...