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Линда СТАНЬИ / Linda STAGNI
| Конкурирующие визуализации: как архитектура становится собственным изображением / Competing Visualizations: How Architecture becomes its Image |
Линда СТАНЬИ / Linda STAGNI
Швейцарский федеральный технологический институт Цюриха (ETH Zuerich), Цюрих, Швейцария Институт истории и теории архитектуры Аспирантка
Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (ETH Zurich), Zurich, Switzerland Institute of the History and Theory of Architecture PhD Candidate linda.stagni@gta.arch.ethz.ch
КОНКУРИРУЮЩИЕ ВИЗУАЛИЗАЦИИ: КАК АРХИТЕКТУРА СТАНОВИТСЯ СОБСТВЕННЫМ ИЗОБРАЖЕНИЕМ
В этой статье исследуются современные значения архитектурных визуализаций. За последние два десятилетия произошли большие изменения в производстве изображений для архитектуры, в связи с чем серьёзно изменились и процессы создания дизайна, отображения и коммерциализации архитектуры. Несмотря на то, что изображения архитектурных сооружений необходимы в основном для целей коммуникации и информирования, средства создания таких изображений позволяют генерировать виды, не имеющие ничего общего со строительством в реальности. Виртуальность не обязательно служит лишь для пред-просмотра реально строящейся архитектуры, но позволяет создавать утопичные и идеологически нагруженные нарративы.
Норвежское бюро MIR, основанное на заре революции технологий визуализации в 2000-х, производит гипер-реалистичные изображения, которые завоевали международную известность. Разглядывание этих изображений порождает вопрос: что отличает архитектурные визуализации от архитектурной фотографии? Главная характеристика визуализации - это её правдоподобность, достигаемая благодаря предполагаемой фотореалистичности. Тем не менее, если смотреть с точки зрения функциональности, визуализация - это альтер-эго фотографии. Архитектурная фотография развивалась как средство репрезентации и коммуникации уже построенных архитектурных объектов. Визуализация - это область ещё не построенного.
Обращаясь к трём разным сюжетам, эта статья исследует темпоральность, собственные ха-
рактеристики и культурную роль архитектурных визуализаций в работах бюро MIR.
Ключевые слова: архитектурная визуализация, фотореализм, MIR, архитектура будущего, сила изображения, цифровая репрезентация архитектуры, реальность и абстракция, renderist.
COMPETING VISUALIZATIONS: HOW ARCHITECTURE BECOMES ITS IMAGE
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This paper aims to investigate the present meaning of the architectural rendering through an analysis of its different constellations and aspects.
In the last two decades, imagery production for architecture had become a phenomenon to such an extent that the processes of designing, depicting and commercializing architecture have undergone deep changes. Despite the image of architecture being produced principally for communication and information purposes, it is nowadays able to generate superior or independent visions detached from built reality. Virtu-ality does not necessarily remain subordinated to the role of previewing built architecture but can create alternative utopian and ideological narrations.
The Norwegian office MIR, founded at the dawn of the visualization-technology revolution in the 2000s, produced hyper-realistic images that became international renown. Viewing these images, the question arises: what makes architectural rendering different from architecture photography? The main characteristic of the rendering is its attempt at plausibility by means of supposed photorealism. However according to a functional perspective, the render is the alter ego
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Линда СТАНЬИ / Linda STAGNI
| Конкурирующие визуализации: как архитектура становится собственным изображением / Competing Visualizations: How Architecture becomes its Image |
of photography. In fact, architecture photography developed as means of representation and communicating built architecture. The rendering belongs to the unbuilt.
By narrating three different plots, this paper aims to explore the temporal, the intrinsic, and the cultural role of the architectural rendering in the work of MIR.
Key words: Architecture rendering; visualizing architecture; photorealism; MIR; future buildings; power of image; digital representations of architecture; reality and abstraction; image of architecture; renderist.
Introduction: About Architecture Visualizations, Renderings, Tridimensional Graphics
Visualizing architecture has always been part of the history of architecture, at least since designing and building were conceived as two different tasks and competences. We can use the Renaissance as a broad juncture here. Depicting prospective building has always been one of the main roles played by architects. It is also connected to a set of existential motivations, that of persuading the client, expressing a precise idea and demonstrating a choice. To a certain extent, representation of architecture always expresses design ideas.
In the last decades. owing to the technological improvements of representation programs, together with a growing social move towards an image-based culture, architecture representation has trodden a normalized path for expressing and communicating projects and buildings. This does not mean it produces a unified vision of architecture. Rather, it indicates that various media and devices are to be involved in the mediatization of architecture. Among these, rendering, or architectural visualization, is one of the most effective tools in depicting architecture. As a simple image, it can easily pass beyond the architectural field. With regard to plans, sections or details, it embodies a widely readable tool.
International and local competitions' agenda, which normally require one or two synthetic images for the submitted project, have also helped renderings to proliferate. These images are required to depict the project in a realistic way, i.e., to place the future building in a perspective that resembles eye vision to represent the project's three-dimensionally scaled to its surroundings, and to depict the building's materiality to evoke 116 the surface and atmosphere the project will create.
Today, architectural visualization belongs to a well-established system of production that was established and has been improved since the 1990s as a derived field of computer graphics. Despite being part of the "iconic turn"1 of contemporary society, visualization of architecture has always been a central part of the design process and realization of architecture. If in the past it was developed throughout different media and techniques derived from an analogue process, in recent times it has become a product related to and deeply embedded in information technologies. These production processes are, however, affecting the contemporary culture of architecture far less than the finished product, the image itself. Captivating, colorful, surprising, fantastic and, at the same time realistic, such images belong to one well-defined
1 First defined by W.T.Mitchell, Picture Theory, (1994).
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Линда СТАНЬИ / Linda STAGNI
| Конкурирующие визуализации: как архитектура становится собственным изображением / Competing Visualizations: How Architecture becomes its Image |
category. Architecture visualizations, renderings, 3d graphics and rendered images, together with other possible definitions, can be defined as images technologically produced (very often by professional offices) to empower architects to express, communicate and, to some extent, understand projects they are working on.
Despite architecture visualization's depiction as pure image, inspiring a certain general comfort for a purview such as architecture, but also for a non-architectural audience, for which technical knowledge, social meaning and cultural role are not readily understandable, our understanding of such images can still be made richer and more complex.
The aim of this essay is to present and analyze the conflictual nature of rendering itself. First, as a disguised competitor to architecture photography, it does not expose the temporal meaning embedded therein. Second, it is a realistic image competing with its abstract essence. Third, it embodies a sphere of competition between the architect and the social role of the image. This article does not investigate the history of architecture visualization; rather it dissects the present meaning of an image resulting from complex production. The case studies taken into consideration here have been produced by the studio MIR, a Norway based creative office that works worldwide. These examples are presented in a hypothetical structure composed of collectivity, individuality and society. Their formal, intrinsic and semantic roles are demonstrated.
The ideas behind the following article derive from two beliefs: that historically, architecture has been shaped and influenced by its representation, and that contemporary architecture still is, and that the architectural representation itself
exists within and refers to a history of semantic and composition constructions derived from other media. Representation of architecture is rarely inventive in its constitution; it is readable because it represents and quotes other media. Theoretically, it might be possible to be visually innovative with rendering, but within the field of architecture, it would, perhaps, not be taken as such. Therefore, by means of an analysis of the role of contemporary architecture representation, some aspects of contemporary architecture can be further unfolded.
1. Five and a Half Meters Below Sea Level: Architecture Rendering Between Time and Photography
In spring 2019, after its completion, peculiar images of the first European underwater res-
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taurant designed by Sn0hetta architects were per- -
sistently disseminated by the most famous architecture magazines, blogs and platforms.2 In a way, the impact of this a la Jules Verne construction was reduced by visualizations of the project already circulated in 2017. In fact, some years be-
2 https://www.archdaily.com/913575/under-snohetta;
https: //www. dezeen. com/2019/03/20/underwater-
restaurant-under-snohetta-baly-norway/ ;
https: //edition.cnn. com/style/article/snohetta-
underwater-restaurant-construction/index.html;
https://www.forbes.com/sites/davidnikel/2019/03/21/a-
meal-at-norways-underwater-restaurant-costs-430-but-
youll-have-to-wait-six-months/;
https://www.architecturaldigest.com/story/snohetta-
underwater-restaurant;
https: //www. domusweb. it/en/architecture/gallery/2019/ 03/20/snohetta-underwater-restaurant-under-opens-norway.html ;
https: //www .designboom. com/architecture/snohetta-underwater-restaurant-norway-under-03-20-2019/ ; https://www.theguardian.com/education/2019/apr/26/s ea-change-the-underwater-restaurant-with-a-new-approach-to-marine-research ...
| 4 (37) 2019 |
Линда СТАНЬИ / Linda STAGNI
| Конкурирующие визуализации: как архитектура становится собственным изображением / Competing Visualizations: How Architecture becomes its Image |
fore the building completion and the officially released architecture photographs, a few impressive visualizations done by the Norwegian based studio MIR had shed light on the project, awaking great curiosity.3 An external visualization and an interior one were enough to reveal the fantasies and expectations of a large public. Two rather poetic and captivating images convey an entire catalogue of information across suggestive compositions.
Fig. 1. Visualization of the exterior of the first European underwater restaurant "Under." Visualization by ©MIR.
The external view (fig. 1) depicts a stonelike monolith leaning against costal rocks emerging from a stormy marine landscape. Highly dramatic, the light reflects on the concrete surface of the half-sunken building, and creates a theatrical opening in the deep grey clouds of the sky. Sur-
3 https://www.archdaily.com/882130/snohetta-unveils-
designs-for-europes-first-underwater-restaurant;
https: //www. independent. co.uk/travel/news-and-
advice/underwater-restaurant-norway-first-europe-
under-baly-sea-food-drink-a8018516.html;
https://www.dezeen.com/2017/10/23/snohetta-unveils-
plans-europes-first-underwater-restaurant-under-
norway/;
https://www.euronews.com/living/2017/10/26/europe-s-first-underwater-restaurant.
rounded by a rough landscape of rocks and northern vegetation, the building follows a transversal trajectory down into the dark blue ocean. The figurative construction of the image easily recalls romantic paintings such as Caspar David Frie-drich's Der Wanderer über dem Nebelmeer or Meeresufer im Mondschein. The power of nature and the articulation of light share a certain quality with such paintings. Although, in MIR's case, the rather abstract building substitutes the human position, being at the center of the composition and working as connector between different natural realms. In the composition, figurative representation, colors and use of light, of the image, MIR uses devices and recognizable references coming from different forms of art, periods, and media, creating a system of suggestions based on a well-developed and complex visual language. On the other hand, by referring to such devices - in the same way as Romantics used the composition of nature - they ground their images in a comprehensible situation. In fact, a generic beholder, with or without any knowledge of Romantic painting, might be impressed by the relationship between nature and architecture in this rendering. The references used by MIR aim to instigate precise reactions in the viewer, far more than to impart a formal relation to the original reference.
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Fig. 2. Interior view of the restaurant space, visualization by ©MIR.
| 4 (37) 2019 |
Линда СТАНЬИ / Linda STAGNI
| Конкурирующие визуализации: как архитектура становится собственным изображением / Competing Visualizations: How Architecture becomes its Image |
Complementary to the exterior visualization, the internal view provides additional suggestions and information about the building (fig.2.). The image depicts the restaurant hall, revealing that the monolith is a hollow body. Displayed inside, tables and chairs appear ready for dinner, and their profiles are projected against the large window screen. From the water outside the window permeates a strong, pale blue light. Everything looks ready for the arrival of restaurant clients. Two waitresses seem to be finishing the last details; one is moving, while the other looks straight toward the fictional camera, as if the image could have been photography of a previous time.
Only by seeing these two images, a generic viewer can easily gain a good comprehension of the project without knowing much about it or being informed about the architects or the context. Both images express the naturalistic core of the project and the special interior concept. The relation to nature, the material evocation of rock by the building volume itself, the intention to make the building work as bridge within different realms, i.e., between land and water, and the explorative intention of the space can be deduced by a quick look at those pictures.
The architecture visualizations evidence the concept of the project, its spatial dimension, its atmosphere and typology of space. To convey such information, the images use a vivid vocabulary that easily recalls a generic personal experience. By instigating recognizable and clear impressions, the viewer can feel him or herself within this space, or experience it. Still, there are no scale references, or technical information, only figurative. Architecture is visualized through an ideal, figurative form, which looks realistic and refers to a general understanding.
The project was completed in March 2019, and the restaurant "Under" - in Norwegian, having the "dual meaning of 'below' and 'wonder'"4 as reported by the architects' website - opened to the public. New images circulated. This time they were classifiable as photographs of the constructed building. With similar glimpses as the rendered images, the published or posted photographs substituted took the place of the rendered ones. At the moment the official photographs of the building were taken, or more precisely, the moment it was possible to take pictures of the newly completed building, something happened. The tension that had grown out of expectations and reality dissipated; the anticipated event occurred and became present.
Whether pre or post-production, photography can question possible differences to an architectural rendering, itself produced out of pre -
and post-production techniques. The existence of the building makes the tangible difference. The main subject of a rendering does not matter in the extent to which it is staged. It cannot be found in reality; it does not yet exist. Moreover, it does not matter how staged a photograph is, because the main architecture depicted there will be found in reality. It is not concerned with which version of reality, or how it became featured and embellished. Photography is a version of a past moment. The visualization of architecture is a depiction of a possible future.
On a formal level, architectural rendering aims to produce and instigate the impression of a photorealistic image. On a collective level, architectural photography and architectural visualizations can be considered as opposite. Architecture rendering creates a pre-history of architecture. It
4 https://snohetta.com/project/428-under-europes-first-underwater-restaurant
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Линда СТАНЬИ / Linda STAGNI
| Конкурирующие визуализации: как архитектура становится собственным изображением / Competing Visualizations: How Architecture becomes its Image |
throws tension into the space between the moment the project started and the moment the building is finished. This tension is produced by means of visualizing the future. Furthermore, the moment of conceptualizing architecture - the whole process of designing a precise space or realizing an idea -comes about through the visualization of an understandable, tangible and readable process for a wide public. The visualization becomes evidence for the existence of this process. The visualization of architecture that will be built creates a collective gaze and a collective expectation aesthetically and formally, defined by the image itself. Thus, it restricts individual interpretations into a single public and shared image. Of course, images undergo a viewer's interpretation, but a photorealistic scene based on a more figurative common language than an abstracted composition will itself define quite clearly how it is supposed to be observed.
Nevertheless, the visualization of Under's exteriors (fig. 1), depicting a future event and coloring a collective and unified expectation, looks very similar to a generic photograph. In fact, implied in the production of rendering is the resemblance or evocation of a plausible photograph. It does not intend to create a normalized vision or idea of photography, but pragmatically, to recall a possible aesthetic of photography. This can be assumed as generic photorealism, since the impression that the rendering tends to have is to be seen as if it were a photograph of the already completed building. In the rendering, it doesn't have to do with recognizing one camera type or any given style. It is a reference to photography as media, not as unique aesthetic authority. Attempting to be photorealistic for a rendering reflects the convention of architects completing a building, then photographing it and using those images as media to
document, communicate and explain the project after it has been built. It is programmatic for the image of the restaurant to be confused and received as if "it were a real photograph." This misunderstanding is intended for the collective, and especially for the layperson.
The position of photography for contemporary society has been studied and defined in a variety of positions and cases, and it is not a univo-cal theme. However, for the "use" and reading of rendered architecture images, it is interesting to consider the new evolution of the mass. What has been defined as mass photography has evolved from 20th century photography, not only in terms of the great social consumption of images, but additionally because of the mass production of it. As addressed by Annebella Pollen, "Mass photography, as a form and a practice, ... has become a
commonplace to observe that we live in an image- -
saturated world and one where the visual penetrates all aspects of our public and private lives."5 This process brings us to a different understanding of photography, by having not only receivers, or consumers, but receivers-producers.
Therefore, if on the one hand, contemporary society, by being part of this mass production, understands that photo reality is a kind of reality, on the other hand, it makes professional work deep in the realm of photorealism to express architectural ideas and visions. MIR expressed in a 2012 interview that "the use of descriptive and explanatory images that describe the geometrical form or concepts does not eliminate the need for images that brand the project and the architects. Images displayed in a public setting are not merely explanations of designs, they are logos. Images
5 Annebella Pollen, Mass Photography: Collective Histories of Everyday Life, Vol. 20. (London: I.B. Tauris, 2016), p. 3.
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Линда СТАНЬИ / Linda STAGNI
| Конкурирующие визуализации: как архитектура становится собственным изображением / Competing Visualizations: How Architecture becomes its Image |
are not read with reason, they are read with emotion. In the end, it is the feeling that the viewer is left with that is important."6
In comparison to other representational arts, the intention of architecture visualizations to be photorealistic overlaps more with the social perception of photography. Due also to the productive turn in photography caused by social media, photography is perceived as a depiction of reality, or even as part of a social image production game. No matter if it is fictional or partial reality, the self-depiction plays a big role in the understanding of photography and images as part of everyday life.
Photography, even in the sense of movie making, represents a way of seeing that we as a society have learned or are assumed to have learned to read, if not in a critical sense, certainly in a formal sense. Whether semantically or formally, one media concealed in the other, photography refers to the memory of a society, even if this is interpretable, fake or tendentious. Instead, visualizing architecture extends and actualizes the future. It projects the social dimension and creation of a new building in the future. The architecture visualization projects into the "information space" an artificial image of something that will be.
Marc Augé defined the past as "never wholly occluded either on the individual or the collective level," and the future as "social dimension" which "depends on others."7 The rendering standardizes a vision of the future, producing sharable visions, normalizing the collective gaze about the future.
6 Trond Greve Andersen, "Teenagers Get It, Architects Don't," Clog, Rendering, (Canada: 2012), p. 117.
7 Marc Auge, The Future, (London and New York:
Verso Books, 2014), p. 10.
To conclude, first, the architectural rendering visualizes and therefore makes recognizable the existence of a project, creating tension between the unbuilt objects and architecture within the social sphere. Second, visualization conveys a generic expectation in an imaginary one that can now be shared, creating community expatiations. Third, having an image that looks "real" but is not real produces a new level of curiosity that becomes a sort of communal validation of a forthcoming event (or building). The future event is recognized and validated by means of the visualization.
By means of architectural visualization, the power of the image occupies and outlines not only the present and the past, but the future, as well. The image itself gains the same meaning structure in society. Formally, the two visualizations (fig.1 and fig.2) could easily be photographs, -
but since they tend to transform a future event into a possibly present one, they generate confusion in time definition. Memories and expectations look similar. Does the rendering mean absence of time difference then? Renderings rely on the existence of photography and its intrinsic importance for architecture. Furthermore, it is the past dimension that enables meaning to be considered and recognized as such. Auge writes, "When the past disappears, meaning is erased."8 Thus, if not in appearance, it is in its intrinsic structure that architectural visualization maintains time distinction. Nevertheless, this aspect could easily get overlooked in a normal rendering, but maybe not, if the building lies five and a half meters below sea level. In that case, the effect is ensured beyond every possible speculation; the image evokes for us futuristic visions.
Ibid, p. 30.
8
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Линда СТАНЬИ / Linda STAGNI
| Конкурирующие визуализации: как архитектура становится собственным изображением / Competing Visualizations: How Architecture becomes its Image |
2. Abstraction and Representation: Pink Visualizations
The creative Norway-based office MIR was founded in the 2000s by Trond Greve and Mats Andersen with the aim of making "portraits of unbuilt architecture."9 They met during their university years when Greve was studying Communication Design at the Norwegian Academy of Art and Design and the Anderson Spatial Design at Bergen Academy of Art and Design. Their first passion was for images and films "inspired by special effect companies such as Mill Film."10
This is, of course, not surprising, as computer graphics saw a first intense application within the animation and movie production. Architecture visualization programs were developed together with the entire branch of computer graphics, the progress of which was of interest to different fields, such as product design, mechanic engineering, and marketing, as well as entertainment industries like games, movies and animation. Even the history of architectural 3d rendering is difficult to be isolated from the development of computer graphics in general.
The first digital representations of architecture depicted just generic volumes and outlines, with the turn of millennium the technologies enabled a more and more realistic texturization of surfaces, lightning of volumes, and in general rendering of reality. The initial resistance to what had appeared as a technological leveling through the "electronic reproduction"11 is nowadays dismissed and the use of rendering in architecture is no more
9 https: //www .mir.no/about/
10 Email interview between the author and MIR studios between 30 August and 6 September 2019.
11 Cf. Fabio Schillaci and Augusto Romano Burelli, "Architectural Renderings: History and Theory, Studios and Practices." Construction and Design Manual, (Berlin: DOM Publishers, 2009), p.73.
questioned - or even if questioned it is commonly used.
The digital photorealistic visualization of a project challenges the primary means of expression used by architects. In fact, architects still design, express and understand space by means of two-dimensional drawings and conventions, such as plan, sections and details where lines, thickness, hatches and texts have a precise symbolic meaning. Apart from these symbolic conventions, rendering unfolds spatial representations in a widely readable way. Despite being accompanied by the fear of "showing too much," and with the risk of openly disappointing clients' expectations, the technological possibility for high resolution and reality resembling representation transformed the field of three-dimensional rendering in a search for a hyper-reality. Of course, what hyper-realistic means and how it can be achieved does not have an easy or univocal answer.
The portfolio published on the webpage of MIR presents a wide variety of projects, situations, colored landscapes and places. Creating a realistic image means creating something open and undefined. This openness has, essentially, two reasons. First, the reality where architecture operates is a varied and highly differentiated urban situation, landscape or wild region with geographical, climatic or vegetation changes and differences in the light and color of the surroundings. Second, architectural projects are always different in scope, place and function. Banally, architecture visualization, by reacting to these conditions, is itself varied and has to react to these different situations, contexts and cultures. Moreover, because reality is subjected to individual vision, realistic imagery has to work hard to rely on principles that can be shared similarly by different individuals. The architecture visualization must express and
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Линда СТАНЬИ / Linda STAGNI
| Конкурирующие визуализации: как архитектура становится собственным изображением / Competing Visualizations: How Architecture becomes its Image |
convey meaning by intriguing and instigating shared and common meanings throughout a specific view - a sort of unified impression.
As photography, the architecture visualization expresses a semantic structure composed of visions that can be steered according to cultural contexts. Even if the semantic construction of photography and photorealistic architectural visualizations are always complex and rely on different layers of complexity, it is nevertheless an abstraction of reality. It is a complex system of abstraction.
Fig. 3. Pink House on a Hill. Ricardo Bofill, taller de arquitectura (ES), visualization by ©MIR.
In the visualization of Pink House by Ricardo Bofill, taller de arquitectura, it is interesting to see the double presence of reality and abstraction. It is a perfectly truthful composition. This composition recalls what minimalist architecture photographs often look like, where a build-
ing's stillness emerges from an also still landscape. However, recurring elements compose a structure that could be infinite and yet recall an idea of abstraction. The clarity of the surfaces, the sun that reflects on them, the lifeless balcony and the strong sunlight all merge to create an abstract composition. On the other hand, the composition as a whole looks real and speaks about a scorching summer noon where no one would be present, and only the sounds of cicadas would fill the air. It is the light, it is the articulated sharp, thin shadow in the frontal view that gives a geometrical calm to the viewer.
In 1907 the doctoral thesis of Wilhelm Worringer, published one year later by Piper Verlag, entitled Abstraktion und Einfühlung. Ein Beitrag zur Styl formalized the contrast between abstraction and empathy, which became highly representative for an entire generation of avant-gardes. Worringer identified two related models to the outer world: existence in "confidence" or in contrast with it.
The less mankind has succeeded, by virtue of its spiritual cognition, in entering into a relation of friendly confidence with the appearance of the outer world, the more forceful is the dynamic that leads to the striving after this highest abstract beauty.12
He linked the idea of abstraction to the one of alienation caused by modern culture.13 If for
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12 Wilhelm Worringer, Abstraction and Empathy: A Contribution to the Psychology of Style, translated by Michael Bullock with an introduction by Hilton Kramer, (Chicago: Elephant Paperbacks, Ivan R. Dee, Publisher, 1997), p. XI.
13 Cf. "Introduction", in: Wilhelm Worringer, Abstraction and Empathy: a Contribution to the Psychology of Style, translated by Michael Bullock with an introduction by Hilton Kramer, (Chicago: Elephant Paperbacks, Ivan R. Dee, Publisher, 1997), pp. VII-XIV.
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Линда СТАНЬИ / Linda STAGNI
| Конкурирующие визуализации: как архитектура становится собственным изображением / Competing Visualizations: How Architecture becomes its Image |
Worringer abstraction was a demonstration of refusing the environment, what would the architectural visualization of the Pink House express? (fig.3)
At first glance, the realistic language would recall an emphatic model according to Worringer's thought. The image of the Pink House looks realistic. But from a technological point of view, i.e., how the image has been created by means of computer graphic programs, the image can be considered an abstraction of reality; the visualization depicts something that does not (yet) exist. It is abstract because it is unbuilt. Therefore, applying Worringer's theory to the Pink House image, one could conclude that the rendering contains both models, empathy and abstraction.
Here, it is necessary to recall that a visualization is not a final product, as a pictorial artwork could be, but is supposed to be a medium followed up by other events, like the construction of the building, and its scope has to be taken into consideration. The image of the Pink House represents something that will or should happen. Exactly because of that, because of its functional nature of "portraying the unbuilt,"14 the viewer assumes that a 3d rendering depicts something real, or that can happen. This is an assumption based on the common use of visualization. It is not proved by the image, but is rather an emotional expectation. The Pink House could also be somewhere else, anywhere with a similar landscape, as well as nowhere. Artists such as Philipp Schärer work to challenge this idea of reality behind a visualization, and stretch the formal composition an image can have (fig.4).
https: //www .mir.no/about/
Fig.4. Dordrecht Bridge, Powerhouse Company (NL),Bridge in a location often painted by the Dutch Masters, visualization by ©MIR.
Another degree of abstraction is the fact that what is depicted in the image is not a painting. It is not an image-based object that is signified, but rather represents a spatial construction. This construction is staged without constructive or building related technical detail included in the image. Intrinsically, the visualization of architecture, following Worringer's definition, represents a social model of alienation to the outer world.
The artistic language of the rendering goes beyond the role of art, as polarized by Worringer, which can tend to be photorealistic and not abstract, as far as it does not await a project's realization depending on its image. Even so, the abstraction is in the meaning and construction of the rendering and not in its aesthetic or visual language. Visualizing a Pink House is not only a formal task; it is an expression of meaning. Nevertheless, when we read this visualization, principally the visual senses are touched, and exactly these senses prevent us from understanding the Pink House image as an abstraction of reality.
3. A Timeless Bridge: Imminent and Transcendent in Architecture Visualization
The role and power of image in art history has, of course, always had a fundamental place. First, it acts as language, formalized as a method of interpretation and analysis by Aby Warburg's
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iconology, for example, or considered as medium of meaning as analyzed by studies such as Freed-berg's The Power of the Image. For architecture, the image has always been more complicated to identify and empower as a category of study. To define what the image means in architecture has always been a difficult task, as it has a changing nature in the field and in different media, as well as embodying different purposes. An "image of architecture" can refer to a photograph, a painting, a drawing or a sketch and it can be representative or descriptive, for studying, copying, designing, building. etc. Furthermore, architecture during the 1990s experienced a radical change in design methods, which involved technological refinement in the production of images, as well. At the same time, society changed under the emergence of informatics, overwhelmed by a hyperproduction of images, and undergoing the effects theorized by sociologist and philosophers like Vilem Flusser, J.W.T. Mitchell, or Gottfried Boehm.15 With different focuses, each author structured a theory about the social environment and the cultural and social changes created by the new visual dimension.
What this has meant, particularly for architecture, is the increasing number of images circulating in and channeled by magazines, blogs and websites. Moreover, what does the presence of the rendered image mean to architectural culture?
15 W. J. T. Mitchell, Iconology: Image, Text, Ideology, (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1986). Gottfried Boehm, "Urteilskraft: über Das Verhältnis Der Kunst Zu Ihrer Gegenwart," Zeitschrift Für Schweizerische Archäologie Und Kunstgeschichte (39, 1982, 2, 99). Gottfried Boehm, "Das Fremde Und Das Eigene, Ethnologica Helvetica" Bd 16, (1992). Gottfried Boehm, "Was Ist Ein Bild?" Bild Und Text, (München: Fink, 1994). Gottfired Boehm, Ikonologie der Gegenwart, (München: Fink, 2009).
Whether for competition, architectural experts, or for public media, the architectural tridimensional visualization takes different forms: it goes from general views to façade representations, from interior spaces to small details, from particular rooms to express atmosphere and situation, etc.
Generally, also owing to practical reasons, the most shared visualization is the exterior one, the one that depicts the entire building immersed, more or less, in the urban or landscape context. The exterior view is the one normally published in newspapers to announce the forthcoming building, the one that appears on the construction site fence, the first of the range of different images used to present a project.
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Fig.5. Bildbau No. 5, 2007 - from the Bildbauten Series; Year: 2007, Credit: © Philipp Schaerer.
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| Конкурирующие визуализации: как архитектура становится собственным изображением / Competing Visualizations: How Architecture becomes its Image |
From a conceptual, as well as a pedagogical perspective, the "general view" means a normalization in the ways of communicating architecture to a greater public. It produces an association between what architecture is and its external view, implying that the image, the public image of facades is architecture. It simplifies the complexity of a building and the multiple ways of living and understanding it. This spreads an idea of architecture primarily related to a visual dimension, as an object that has to be watched and admired, and only secondarily as a space to be used and experienced. This does not mean that users are not depicted in the rendering, but they normally tend to strengthen the idea of visual experience and cen-trality of architecture.
What does this mean for society? What meaning does this assume in society?
"By applying the term 'grand narratives' to the myths of modernity, Lyotard, in La Condition Postmoderne, underlined the narrative dimension of the utopias and ideologies born in the twentieth century. He said that these visions were immediately distinct from myths in the traditional sense, in two respects: they spoke of mankind in general, of humanity, not of a particular group like earlier cosmogonies and cosmologies, and their bearing was on the future, not on the origin."16
In light of what Lyotard expresses, what speaks to the future for humankind are ideologies and utopias. Reversing Lyotard's sentence, visualization should contain some ideology or utopia.
Using a generic point of view, the rendering carries an image-dependent understanding of architecture of the near or far future, expressing mostly an external general view of the building.
However, this does not entirely speak to the relationship between architecture and image. On the contrary, it assumes a conflictual relationship between the architect and the illustrator.
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16 Marc Augé, The Future, translated by John Howe,
(London and New York: Verso Books, 2014), pp. 25-
26.
Fig.6. NZZ Verlagsbeilage 6. November 2019, typical use by newspaper of exterior renderings to depict future/ to be built projects.
The image for the Dordrecht bridge competition is an interesting example, especially with regard to the settlement's formation (fig. 6). Commissioned by the architects Powerhouse Company for the conceptualization of the project, the landscape around explicitly recalls painting imagery:
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Линда СТАНЬИ / Linda STAGNI
| Конкурирующие визуализации: как архитектура становится собственным изображением / Competing Visualizations: How Architecture becomes its Image |
"The design for the 130 meter-long pedestrian and cycle bridge aimed to create a dynamic new image for the city inspired by its artistic heritage—Dordrecht is famous for its oil painters and for being the subject of many artworks depicting its picturesque watery cityscape. The site of the bridge offers pedestrians and cyclists a contemporary snapshot of Jan van Goyen's 1651 masterpiece View on Dordrecht, previously only visible to those arriving by waterbus."17
In this example, the future project is inserted in a timeless dimension, provided by the actual skyline of the city of Dordrecht and the pictorial style through which the landscape and the river are drawn. Thus, throughout a specific visual language the image acts in a temporal continuity, in a wide extension of time, coming from the past and going in some future direction, passing by the real, present city. However, the timeless characteristics of this image rely on the visual and creative skills of MIR. The aim is to conceptualize the idea of the architect in an image. The 3D artist produces and expresses what the architects believe is the core of their projects.
At the beginning of their career, after experimenting with other fields, the founder of MIR moved to architecture, partly because it was a way of working without any mediation.18 They mediate the project themselves; renderers work and produce their work directly in discussion and under
17https://www.powerhouse-
company.com/projects/bridge-dordrecht-prins-claus 18 Email Interview between the author and the MIR office between 30 August and 6 September 2019: "We were mainly inspired by special effect/film companies such as Mill Film. To start with we pursued different paths, but found architecture most interesting. It allowed us to work directly with our clients and to bypass art directors and others who had an interest in controlling our creative direction."
contract with the architect. This direct relationship between architect and illustrator creates a confused authority position within the project. The gray zone between the figure who designs the image of architecture and the figure who designed the project is artificial. It refers to the communication of a project, not the built one, even if it is still consistent.
One basic observation involves the fact that render artists are never presented accompanying the images they produce. Images with render-ers portrayed as authors are rarely seen. Modernist representation, where the collaged hand of the architect is shown holding a model of the project, acting as supreme designer, is never used for the figure who is producing the contemporary visualization. Even this omission can be interpreted as derivation from modernism, where the architect is the single actor acknowledged as author, related and sometimes even personified by the building.19 The architecture visualization misses a frame, a collaborative frame, to become a symbolic representation, an explicit artwork. The presence of the render artist is denied; the productive process of the image is hidden.
According to MIR, "the average architect is losing power due to how visualization standards are emerging,"20 since visualization culture is
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19 Beatriz Colomina, Conference The Secret Life of Modern Architecture or We Don't Need Another Hero, 28 March 2018 Harvard GSD URL: https://www.gsd.harvard.edu/event/beatriz-colomina-the-secret-life-of-modern-architecture-or-we-dont-need-another-hero/
20 Email Interview between the author and the office MIR between 30 August and 6 September 2019: "Do
you think architect and illustrator are competitors? Nowadays reality does not count that much if you think about what virtuality can produce." MIR: I think that the average architect is losing power due to how the visualization standards are emerging."
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Линда СТАНЬИ / Linda STAGNI
| Конкурирующие визуализации: как архитектура становится собственным изображением / Competing Visualizations: How Architecture becomes its Image |
growing so rapidly. This situation has worsened because the media of the image is not shown in its man-made nature, as collaborative frame. It is not represented as a work done by people but rather as a supreme a temporal authority. On a conceptual level, the authority of the architect is competing with that of the image.
it is exactly in the artist's self-representation as trompe l'oeil that a new level is presented.
"Defined by its lack of single-point perspective, trompe l'oeil painting presents an imminent view of reality. The paintings depend upon viewers to construct meaning, thus offering an illustration and critique of theories of American literary realism that rely on a Cartesian metaphorics of vision."22
The absence of the renderer as author, projects onto the image a transcendent authority, to which the architect cannot compete. Visualizations gain the role of inauguration, anticipation and memory for contemporary architectural culture, becoming timeless. By giving an imminent view of the architecture visualization, architecture and its image could regain a unity in the present and leave the future free for idealization and from images. Architects should try to ask for imaginary photographs rather than for rendered reality.
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I want to thank the offices of MIR studio for their availability and kindness in answering my questions for the purposes of compiling this essay.
References
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Fig.7 Autoportrait en trompe-l'oeil, c. 1868. Jean Marie Faverjon.
Taking an example out of temporal context, the painting Autoportrait en trompe-l'oeil, (c.1868) by Jean Marie Faverjon (fig.7) draws an interesting parallel. "L'artiste donne à voir un jeu dont il est le maître ironique."21 The artist performs a play for which he is the ironic master. But
21 Annette Béguin, "Images en texte, images du texte, dispositifs graphiques et communication écrite," Information-communication, (Villeneuve D'Ascq (Nord): Presses Universitaires Du Septentrion, 2006).
1. Auge, Marc. The Future, translated by John Howe. London and New York: Verso Books, 2014.
2. Capetillo, Christina. Questions of Representations in Architecture. Aarhus: Arkitektskolens Forlag, 2015.
3. Catmull, Edwin E. A Subdivision Algorithm for Computer Display of Curved Surfaces. Salt Lake City: University of Utah, 1974.
22 Trubek, Anne American Literary Realism and the Problem of "Trompe l'Oeil" Painting,"Mosaic: An Interdisciplinary Critical Journal; Vol. 34, No. 3 (September 2001), pp. 35-54. URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/44029611; p. 20.
| 4 (37) 2019 |
Линда СТАНЬИ / Linda STAGNI
| Конкурирующие визуализации: как архитектура становится собственным изображением / Competing Visualizations: How Architecture becomes its Image |
4. Flückiger, Barbara. "Visual Effects: Filmbilder Aus Dem Computer," Zürcher Filmstudie 18. Marburg: Schüren, 2008.
5. Flusser, Vilem. The Shape of Things: a Philosophy of Design. London: Reaktion Books, 2012.
6. Mitchell, W.J.T. Iconology: Image, Text, Ideology. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1986.
7. Pollen, Annebella. Mass Photography: Collective Histories of Everyday Life. Vol. 20. International Library of Visual Culture. London: I.B. Tauris, 2016.
8. Rendering, CLOG. Canada: 2012.
9. Trubek, Anne American Literary Realism and the Problem of "Trompe l'Oeil" Painting,"Mosaic: An Interdisciplinary Critical Journal; Vol. 34, No. 3 (September 2001), pp. 35-54. URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/44029611
10. Schillaci, Fabio and Burelli, Augusto Romano.
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Manual. Berlin: DOM Publishers, 2009. NB: Bu-relli, Augusto Romano. "Architectural Drawing in the Age of its Electronic Reproducibility", pp. 71-
11. Worringer, Wilhelm. Abstraction and Empathy: a Contribution to the Psychology of Style, translated by Michael Bullock with an introduction by Hilton Kramer. Chicago: Elephant Paperbacks, Ivan R. Dee, Publisher, 1997.
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