seriously?

with computer modelling you can store an entire building's information in one file from which you can get plans, sections, elevations, in addition to the cool, helpful renderings...think about how much time you save by not having to use autoCAD to make those drawings.

I would also assume that realistic renderings prove a useful tool when trying to win over clients as they can produce the "wow" or "ahh" factor.

i don't think the issue is about sustainability; if the computers/servers weren't running to produce photoreal renderings... they would be running cad, or photoshop or something else.

architecture is about representation and finding the best possible solution for a problem, a building. The tools that are used to represent our ideas are constantly evolving, and the most recent innovations are in photorealistic rendering software. these tools allow for us to visualize solutions and share them with clients - not all clients can read a drawing set and know what they means. these renderings are a form of communication and sharing ideas...

so no i don't think they are a waste.

I think the photorealistic renderings are the devil at the early stages. They look too finished and solid to change. The clients are easily scared of them just because they don't like the colour of the door handles. We're fighting with our boss at the moment because he thinks it's all about photorealism and we're tired of wasting of time and resourses.

hottness should only be used in press releases

early stages of hottness will cause drama

In terms of art history, there seems to be lots of flirtations with photorealism but it seems to be rather unique to the 20th century.

Although art and architecture tend to overlap a lot, muddling their histories can be dangerous. But do any of you tihnk there will be a paradigm shift anytime soon where black-and-white will resurface? I tend to like simpler line drawings because I'm more interested in floor plans, elevations and site plans. I also kind of feel even if your build is your building, the exterior of the building isn't for you. It's for the people who have to look at it.

I tend to think the hottness, like certain technologies, provides too much wow factor and over rides the simplicity of communicating the basics. I'm also mildly interested in the inclusion of people in renderings. From a scale perspective I think it helps but I think its phony.

Photoreal is simply a product of technology. 10 years ago is was impossible, and in 10 years we'll be making movies in a few weeks.

And, no, we will not move back. This is not 'art', this is representations of what 'will be', not just some fantasy. Therefore, people need to see what it'll look like before hand, how it will work, etc.


Your statement about the exterior only having to do with others is only as relevant as a statement that you only wear clothing, or a kind of clothing, for others.


As Blake Smith suggests, "Seriously?"

It's hard to see the human figure as "phony" if it serves a vital scaling function in a rendering. But such figures in digital renders are sometimes the first clue that the image isn't a photo -- either because they are too abstract, or too detailed, and/or incorrectly lighted ?

(Wright virtually never included the figure -- or any "context" such as neighboring buildings -- in drawings or photos, either because he wanted his objects to assume a sort of undefined "universal scale," or because he intentionally played with scale to make the buildings appear larger on the page than they really are. First-time visitors who have studied his work only in drawings and photos can expect to be surprised at how small they sometimes are !)

i meant by phone because the people are always doing generic people things.

i havent seen too many renderings where someone is pissing in a corner or there's a bum passed out on a sidewalk or people smoking cigarettes or people loitering [and not dining al fresco in hip furniture in sidewalk cafes].

That's why i said they help in scaling but are otherwise phony.

And to trace... "Your statement about the exterior only having to do with others is only as relevant as a statement that you only wear clothing, or a kind of clothing, for others." I have someone here that you need to meet. Trace, this is fashion. Fashion, this is trace.

i just saw my first rendered project completed as a building. it was a residence in india. man, what a weird experience. i rendered the house about three years ago. i had nothing to do with construction documents or construction administration of the project. i left the firm shortly after finishing the rendered presentation. a few weeks ago i caught up with my old boss, and he pulls out his laptop to show me the completed project. it looks almost identical to the renderings i created years ago, but because i was only viewing the actual house in jpegs, it had about as much reality to me as the renderings i had worked on. completely bizarre experience.

Ha ! (I'm STILL looking for that lost quote, something about the actual building as the unfortunate necessity that occurs between the drawings and the photos. . .)

Every choice has a source, and consequences. If the firm would rather see "nice citizens" in its drawings, rather than "urban reality," there has to be a reason for that choice. Probably the same reason that they don't invite you to client meetings if you chain-smoke and have BO ?

I find that working in BIM, keeps the project malleable as a plasticine model. I then print out a shaded perspective as a quick way to keep things in that work in progress sketch mode, the client likes this, and is able to communicate to the architects without worring about. a "commited photo-realistic" image of a design option. The photo-realistic images produced by MAX or Revit2009 do tend to convey a "final" design decision, whereas a quick print of a shaded perspective is like a trace sketch.

Unfortunately "hot" renderings are often used as cover for poor design.

the sustainability issue probably has less to do with the amount of electricity generated by computers than the amount of paper used for plots & test plots. today a finished CD set can easily run over 100 pages (and who knows how many test plots, review sets, etc).

i remember looking through an archive of old builidings on my college campus and some of the most beautiful ones (typically 60-100 years old) were hand drawn on about 15-20 sheets of paper. moreover, when the drawings were by hand, a draftsman might very well spend weeks working on single sheet. how plots would a cad monkey churn through in the same amount of time?

i know that it's against the grain, but in recent years, i've seriously considered eliminating digital drawing and returning to the draft board...except that in the meantime, i've also become a kind of anti-environmentalist, so i guess i don't mind cad if it helps destroy the environment.

Well, it doesn't seem like a lot of electricity but data processing and number crunching is expected to surpass other industries in terms of power consumption.

The reason I brought it up was just the juxtaposition of bragging about LEED at the same time using a horrible amount of technology to actualize something "low impact." Of course, it would be excessive to point out that this small LEED project of about 4000 square feet had 45 spaces of parking.

I don't have a problem with computer-aided design, photoshop or creative uses. I was just asking if the extra push in quality is worth the obvious setbacks of doing business or representing ideas in a trendy culturally-subjective methodology.

I know this is where urban design and urban planning takes a little bit of a turn away from architecture is that people tend to actually prefer less involved and less skilled representations of plans-- from reasons that it doesn't alienate, plans will never be the same on paper and that accuracy is expensive. When I worked in the newspaper industry, most readers preferred 5 year-old styled pen-and-ink illustrations or institutional flash card like photos over bloated, over processed graphics.

I always keep my clothes on when modeling.....just cause I don't want to scare everyone.

"i've also become a kind of anti-environmentalist"

Interesting. Should I ask you to expand on that, either here or in a different thread ? Is this in the nature of a personal backlash against enviro/green overkill, or. . .?


"When I worked in the newspaper industry, most readers preferred 5 year-old styled pen-and-ink illustrations or institutional flash card like photos over bloated, over processed graphics."

I'd like to know more about that. How was public sentiment determined ? Perhaps, with color reproduction replacing black-and-white in newspapers, the often off-register images are far less effective than a simple line drawing ?

(In a parallel if divergent vein, I note that newspapers are finally beginning to credit architectural illustrators, or at least their employers, when reproducing their work, replacing the once-universal "artist's conception" tag. . .)

If the clients want a 3d model that looks realistic and are paying us to do so, that's what they will get.

Remember, a lot of these rendering get a lot of mileage. The clients use the them, merketing people for both the client and the architect use them, etc. Often times they are use for a while too. I try to be as efficient as possible with my renderings. Sometimes, I let them chew while working on other production-related items. I refuse to fudge my billable time either because obviously that just doesnt work out in the long run.

Most of the research regarding newspaper and mass media communication in print is stuff I've picked up from SND (Society for News Design). They also do a lot of work or are an aggregate of work in research dealing with readability, clarity and popularity.

Not architecture itself but the presentation of architecture is incredibly synonymous with newspaper design because they're both large format, complex communicative devices. They both have to explain the most complex of details in the simplest means necessary.

Probably one of the more fascinating things is eye tracking studies-- most people start just off center and work in a backward '6' motion that's awfully similar to the same spiral produced by the golden mean. Gutters, lines, broken text, italicization and 'paragraph rhythm' are instructional narratives that causes the eyes to refocus; in other words, if you know what you are doing, you can push people's eyes around a page without them being aware of it.

Basically, there's a long formula-based approached to making even the most mundane things exciting or important.

Check out SND's website and this year's winners... you'll get a good idea about simple and traditional mass communication and what kind of visual concepts readers are digging.

Thanks. That's cool. . .

Relating newspaper design to architecture? r&H, you surely are projecting your experiences with both to make them relate. I mean, yes, it is interesting to track the eye, and study this to how an interesting composition can work, but this certainly isn't unique to newspaper design per say, really more to print design and albeit DESIGN in general. I honestly couldn't think of two more disparate field to relate than journalism and architecture.

I do agree with you that photorealistic rendering loses some of the old, more tactile qualities of renderings ... its almost like the design intent and ideas came through much more clearly in those old renderings ... but our reasons for preferring such things are obviously much different.

The relation with newspaper design and with architectural presentation is that you have one big "idea", little sub "ideas", headers, footers, infographics, captions and sidebars tied together with branding, dates and page numbers. It's also a format and paper issue.

I would pretty much call these ideas unique to print and publication design. I wouldn't call them a feature of design in general though.

You can have almost an entire newspaper of nothing but pictures or illustrations or art. You wouldn't learn entirely that much from it. Architectural presentation is ideally the same thing with one big feature, several sub features and bits of text tying them together. What makes the two highly interrelated in the large format part and working with resolution at those sizes.

In print making and other traditional print design mediums that are large format tend to require older and more difficult processes in constructing their images.

realistic rendering is good... so architect will not hide behind those self fantasizing sketch... & fair to client too...

energy take off modeling / aesthetic wow rendering

It is a way of communication. Not all the decision makers have the architecture background and can read your "pen-and-ink" drawings.

Also for marketing - what if your business competitors have the eye-candy renderings while you don't?

And for media, especially for large projects. A rendering is a popular way to share the information with public.

as well as the model being used before hand for energy analysis and in the field for the contractor to do takeoffs and verification of design intent.