Are we losing something when we render hyper-real? It’s a question that floats in the air of the New Views exhibition at the Art Institute of Chicago. The curators, working in collaboration with the NYC-based journal CLOG, describe how these ubiquitous images are easily shareable (just copy and paste), and, most critically, they’re breathtakingly photo-realistic. It’s now within the power of the architect to easily represent a true image of a built project, regardless of whether the project is innovative and thoughtful or dull and substandard. So when all projects can be easily rendered, where’s the true value of a rendering these days? Eric de Broche des Combes / Luxigon. 150 Rays, 2013. Courtesy of Eric de Broche des Combes / Luxigon. The question underlies an exhibition where architects and the public walk among architectural images, all cast through the museum space in rapid succession by projectors. The curators and CLOG categorized the renderings into four categories: Developer Real, Euro Cool, Zoom!, and Critical Collage. Each type had its own projector and wall space where images were projected within a dull golden-colored painterly frames. While the categories where somewhat instructive, the frames were the real kicker. …
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