Readings: James Bridle

Balloons and render ghosts

This article was originally published in Domus 966 / February 2013 

The London-based architectural visualisation studio Picture Plane creates images that go beyond photorealistic representation and create painterly images that convey something of the intangible.  Above: a housing development in South London, designed by John Smart Architects

In a series of images of a proposed South London housing development by John Smart Architects , Majer first constructs the base buildings in 3ds Max and inks them with physically accurate material maps and lighting effects drawn from a range of libraries. There are libraries of trees, and people, too, with which to populate the surroundings and the street. But the rendered model is then moved into Photoshop, and the texture of the final image is taken from classic English landscape painting: the colour palette and the clouds in the sky are based on the paintings of George Stubbs; a cyclist stands astride his bicycle much as the romantic painter's horsemen do. Another image, produced for a proposed settlement in Scotland by Níall McLaughlin Architects , flattens out the perspective to produce an effect akin to naive painting, evoking innocence and a simplicity of living.

Picture Plane's work is deliberately, explicitly painterly: the views are subjective and far from the "verified views" requested by planning departments, legally binding documents specifying the exact relationship of a new structure to its surroundings. Before a building is fully planned, it is necessary to suggest, rather than define, and the production of renderings involves much toing and froing between architect and visualiser to establish the correct mood. This process in turn feeds back into the architects' design, perhaps filling the gap in process that Graves identifies as being created by the death of drawing. 

But many visualisations define the work even more strongly. As the power of the architect wanes, and planners and developers become more powerful in the process, the visualisation may come to form, shape and define the final outcome more than any sketch did before. The trend in visualisation is towards the photoreal, ever more achievable with software. And what was once considered the domain of the architect is now performed by the visualisation artist, or even by the software itself.

While a little bit of Photoshopping is not unique to the architecture and construction industries, there is growing concern that visualisation and standardisation will increase the levels of "software determinism" in architecture. As architecture and planning become more integrated digitally, there is a movement towards Building Information Modeling (BIM) processes — complete digital records of facilities from conception to operation — which many believe will eventually become law. Many of these workflows formalise visualisations as part of the design process to such an extent they are drawing complaints from architects who feel that image-making is replacing creative and material rigour in building design.While Michael Graves worries that "something is lost when [students and staff] draw only on the computer", perhaps he should in fact be concerned that another kind of unachievable hyperreality is being born.

https://www.domusweb.it/en/architecture/2013/02/27/balloons-and-render-ghosts.html

Life Among the Render Ghosts

TAR Magazine, Issue 8, Fall 2012.

  "End the evictions now." "Accessible housing for all." "Homes are a human right." High above them, on a balcony that appeared too small to accommodate him, a young man dropped a banner down the front of a dun-and-terracotta mixed-use housing block: "I don't remember how I got here."
 

One of the women in the procession explained the situation to me. "I've heard about a new master plan in Docklands that's looking to fill some old warehouses, but I'm fed up of moving on. Sometimes it's like you can't breathe. The weight of expectation and the knowledge that this is all temporary pressing down on you like a sheet of glass."

  

The render artists, in turn, claim the situation is out of their hands. Since architecture became a business of selling futures and lifestyles rather than living spaces—sustainable LEED developments, third space business parks, "European-style" plazas—the job is to place entire quarters beyond critique, already integrated into the fabric of the the bustling, productive, hyper-efficient and eternal-sunshine smart city.

The render ghosts have no real memories; they depend on the software to frame, process and encode their experiences, and the unstable flux of political will to ensure their continuity. And good luck to them: they inhabit our finest code/spaces, the notional realm of our imaginings, the near-just-future cities we will never get to live in. Some days, disconnected and adrift in the dirty city, I almost envy them.

https://www.flickr.com/photos/stml/8559615958/in/photostream/