Negroni Talk #36 The Picturesque #1: Representation And Architecture

The history of architectural image making is ancient and, more often than not, involves a bit of propaganda. Designers have had to communicate their ideas to their paymaster - be they church, state or wealthy individual - and selling your vision comes with the territory. Fast forward to today and we’re reached a point where renders are so convincing that they can be mistaken for photos of a finished building. You can’t blame people for being suspicious that they’re being conned by a vision of a built environment that can never exist, and there is a lot of cynicism within the #RenderVsReality discussions on social media. But does the fault lie with the 'deceptive' image or the value engineering that later comes with the act of construction? There are currently some architects who would rather park the glossy, corporate-looking computer creations and focus on painterly landscapes with a cloudy Constable sky or adopt a Hockney-esque pastel palette with flattened planes. These drawings are works of art in of themselves, which could call into question their accuracy at describing the 3-dimensional actualities of lived in space. Has there ever been a ‘truthful’ depiction of a work of architecture though? Surely images will always be a 'representation' of reality and therefore fallible for all sorts of reasons. Virtual reality offers us a more immersive environment that could enforce a greater honesty, however this too is susceptible to visual tinkering and there are sensory limitations within the haptic technology ‘experience’. (i.e no sound, no smell etc). You have to ask who architectural images are made for and how they’re being deployed. Are they used to gain political support, permission to build, sell a place to live/work or are they just created to be a nice drawing? And what happens when the fashions for certain styles of renders start to affect the production of architecture itself? Where do we draw the line? Featuring: Charles Holland, Charles Holland Architects (chair) Mary Duggan, Mary Duggan Architects Yẹmí Aládérun, Enfield Council David Knight, DK-CM Hanna Afolabi, Mood and Space Jan Bunge, Squint/Opera amongst others….