What's in a rendering

At lunch last week my friend Nick asked me "what's an architectural rendering?" and I was a little bit taken aback. In my own vocabulary I count 'sketch' and 'model' at least on the same level as 'rendering'.. and doesn't everyone know what sketches and models are?

Rendering from a recent design project.
Total-block design set in the San Juan Barrio of Quito, Ecuador.

For some reason when my friend asked about architectural renderings though I was taken by surprise. In my mind, a rendering is the natural culmination of an architectural design proposal. It's the picture that allows someone to enter into the world of the 3D model and experience in glossy 2D what exactly has been proposed as an architectural design.

Perhaps my reasoning for this is unfounded, but ever since my first day of college the idea of 2D 'representation' as a medium for communicating a spatial architectural message was the modus operandi of the design process.  I call this idea a 'rendering' and around other students I haven't had to question the idea much.

But in fact an architectural rendering is not just the end product of a spatial visualization.  It's not just the money shot  that gets thrown around archdaily and suckerpunch.

Architectural rendering, courtesy of Bjarke Ingalls Group. Would any of this
actually happen at once? Probably not. But isn't that the idea.

I'm beginning to realize that a rendering is an immersion not into the actual world of a design, but into the conceptual world that a designer has imagined; it is something of a best-of-all-possible-worlds scenario where just like the picture above, things may happen in a 2D image that would never happen contemporaneously. The sort of thing that makes you ask, 'is that a couple making out on a balcony as kids play on snow-covered car? Oh, but there's a building in there also and I guess that's what I'm supposed to be looking at.'

Is this an architectural rendering? I'd say yes but just barely.
Image courtesy of SuckerPUNCH

In my opinion the Merriam-Webster definition of render does little to support the public knowledge of what an architectural rendering actually means.  After three definitions that seem to indicate 'render' as an act of passing an object along to someone by means of physical conveyance, the fourth definition strikes perhaps closest to what I would call the proper definition of an architectural rendering.

4 b (1) :  to reproduce or represent by artistic means.

But even this definition falls short; I propose that a rendering is not only the artistic means of reproduction or representation, but also the immersion of the viewer into a world created by the artist/designer. For that reason some of my favorite architectural renders are those like the work created by concept artist Bruno Werneck; allusional but not defined. Atmospheric, but not intangible.  If architectural drawings could expand to include this sort of rendering style, I think it would broaden the horizon of the profession to encompass a much more immersive experience than what is commonly associated with architectural design proposals.

Bruno Werneck concept sketch from the game 1313

First Academic Publication

Exciting news from the writing-front.  My paper Post/Post was selected by the PennDesign Planning department for its 2014 issue of Panorama. Check out the publication/link below:

Reflections on Quito

Last week I traveled with a group of Historic Preservation graduate students to Ecuador for an urban heritage consulting opportunity.  As part of our Urban Regeneration in the Americas prompt, we sought to address public housing in the Historic Center of Quito.  As a city steeped in history, Quito dates back to 1534 when Spaniards settled atop a pre-Colombian settlement at the base of Mt. Pinchinca (a large volcano in the Andes).  However, over the past 480 years the contemporary city of Quito has grown far beyond its colonial roots, leaving behind many vacant buildings on the slopes of Pinchincha, but not many ideas for how to adaptively reuse them.

Our challenge was to propose two scales of housing development in the Historic Center-- the microscopic scale involves a single building and the macroscopic scale involves an entire block.

The hilly terrain and wide range of land

use makes for a challenging urban site

Horizontal vs. Vertical property consolidation

Our challenge was to propose two scales of housing development in the Historic Center-- the microscopic scale involves a single building and the macroscopic scale involves an entire block.

Thesis Draft 1.0

1. What happens to politically significant buildings when regimes shift and a new political entity comes into power?
2. How does our current culture (or social structure) wrestle with and decide what to do with buildings left over from a previous political generation or social zeitgeist?
3. What happens to buildings that are left beached upon changing social and economic tides?

-- A classification of types of buildings based on the catalyst for their original creation. Political, cultural, educational, economic, residential, infrastructural, institutional, etc. (Choose one type for simplicity’s sake).

-- A dichotomy of why the building has come to its state of abandonment.  Political upheaval, social acceptance lost, changing global economy, cultural ambitions and cultural capacity has changed, educational/institutional models have shifted, economic/geographic flux, natural disaster, material decay, infrastructural obsolescence, demographic shifts, martial action, etc.

-- An analysis of the qualities/qualifiers that impact the building’s capacity to adapt [carrying capacity]. Utilitas, firmitas, venustas (cc. Eduardo Rojas).

-- Degrees of intervention
re-creational (remake in old image)
co-creational (remake to match the context of a place but with the respect to the building’s original form/function/use.
neo-creational (to complement existing qualities of the building to new additional uses)
post-creational (to contrast historic building characteristics with vastly modernized material/form/use)

-- Considerations for how these interventions may impact society and lead to new conception/life of old building

-- Apply in a design. A building that embodies these characteristics and which has a socio/cultural/political charge to see how adaptation can bring about critical analysis and new use for unused buildings.

**In addition to the ‘Apply in a design’ step, also consider the following:
An exploratory analysis of the ways in which we convey a building’s use and image prior to its physical reuse/construction. What means and media do we use to impact/address (point 2) dichotomies for the building’s original abandonment. How can designers use media to modify popular mindset.

Similar to Alexander Zaera Polo’s Politics of the Envelope, a study of historical and politically charged buildings, analyzing what happens to a significant structure during political transformations or shifts in political/economic power

“In investigation into the interplay of politics and architecture with a quest toward understanding why buildings are abandoned, what keeps them in their state of abandonment, and what factors are necessary to achieve their eventual adaptation and re-use. Of special interest is the process that power swings in politics and economics bring about and how educators, students, and practitioners can be more aware of the factors at play in a design project.”