| Take a look around you and guess how many individual objects you are surrounded by. Not objects of a particular type, just things that are in the room. It’s difficult, right? This is the challenge that architects face when they make 3D visualisations of their projects. How do you make them believable? |
| The libraries of 3D visualisation software are packed with hundreds of realistic, pre-made models of people and objects ranging from police officers to surfboards, each of them ready to be dropped into the digital world. |
| They bring models to life and create the illusion of photorealistic images. Complicated projects may use hundreds of these individual models to simulate everything from crowds to a messy desk. Each object can be individually placed, sized, and arranged in order to create the exact look the architect wants. |
| The business of creating 3D visualisations has spawned an offshoot "archiviz" industry that specialises in imagining the future. Visualisers take on briefs from architects, often incomplete designs, and fill them with rich detail to create snapshots of a completed project. This skill has made them a powerful tool in a world where clients and countries are looking to build the next big thing. |
| Visualisations have become the newest form of "nation branding". Years before a megaproject is built, you are likely to see it in the form of a fantastical image that sells a vision of a near-perfect future, complete with abundant greenery and smiling faces. The world of architectural imagery no longer exists to convince developers and clients; it sells images of how a country wishes to be seen. |
Of pencils and cursors
| You come across architectural visualisations more than you realise. They are plastered on construction site hoardings, billboards, and the occasional flythrough video about a billion-dollar project. |
| For years, visualisations were more akin to works of art, deliberately incomplete and with generous use of creative licence. Their intention was not to portray a building faithfully, but to capture its essence and emotion. Drawings relied on the author's understanding of the laws of perspective and, no matter how accurate, maintained a safe distance from hyperrealism. |
| Made by hand, drawings did not have the flexibility of computer models. A view had to be carefully chosen with the knowledge that producing an alternate angle would require countless more hours of drawing. Images were made with the single rule that "every line must mean something". |
| Today, the approach is completely different. 3D models and real-time rendering software have meant that photorealistic images can be produced at a rapid pace. Images are not produced to show emotion, but feasibility and believability. The advent of realistic imagery has meant that drawings can show buildings merged seamlessly into their context, and the result is a highly convincing vision of the future. |
| Digital modelling has also taken away the beauty of omission. Images rarely carry the same level of emotion as their analogue predecessors and struggle to possess the same air of mystery or possibility. The models that are used to produce the visualisations are oftentimes the same models used to produce highly detailed technical drawings. |
| A model file will have handrails, door handles, and even furniture modelled to near completion. Materials can be accurately mapped to their real-world equivalents, and perspective matches the human eye. When this level of detail appears in visualisations, it makes the final image almost too believable, but in the world of nation branding, this is a feature, not a bug. |
A world of powerHow do countries shape their image? If you think of South Korea, you think of slick choreography and the explosive production of K-pop music videos. India brings to mind Bollywood cinema, and France conjures scenes of fine dining, high fashion, and luxury. These are not clichés, but all curated and deliberate parts of how a country speaks to the rest of the globe.In order to cooperate in today's world, countries need partners and friends. They develop these relationships by projecting one of two types of "power": hard and soft. Hard power is tangible and can be easily measured, such as military or economic force; it is the "traditional" way of doing business. On the other hand, soft power uses a country's culture and values to attract partners by persuading them to find common ground and work together. Cultural exports are consumed by people around the world, making them valuable linkages between countries. Architecture has always been a soft power tool. Countries attract thousands of tourists to their historic enclaves and religious sites, benefitting immensely from their preservation as heritage sites. Holiday rental properties in a city's "old centre" almost always sell at a premium for this very reason. Today, architectural visualisations have become a new tool in the world of soft power. In the world of interconnected finance and multinational corporations, countries can attract investors into megaprojects from just about anywhere. As many try to reposition themselves in the 21st century, persuasive visuals are a currency used to attract investment from local and international backers. The realism and perception of stability (literal and metaphorical) offered by visuals is a welcome mat for trading partnerships. The new clientsFew have mastered the world of CGI diplomacy like Saudi Arabia. As the kingdom has raced to build towers, futuristic cities, and ports, its visualisations have become its newest export. To adapt an adage, a picture speaks far clearer than a thousand-word investment prospectus.It has heavily leaned into its heritage and technological innovation to portray itself as a forward-looking country that has not forgotten its historical roots. Masterplans inspired by local settlements and sprawling cultural and sporting complexes have formed the backbone of this new style of imagery. Visuals come with the trademark glints of light and lens flares to create dreamlike neighbourhoods that shine in the day and towers that glow at night. The rise of CGI diplomacy has coincided with the proliferation of social media. Instant feedback and ease of access have meant that visualisations become gateways into countries. If someone's first interaction with media from Saudi Arabia is an image of a futuristic desert hotel, they are exposed to a side of the country that it has carefully put together in order to draw interest. As TikTok and Instagram become more enmeshed in everyday life, the attention economy merges with the image economy. In order to generate enough interest to warrant a like, images have to be flamboyant enough to capture a few seconds of a viewer's attention. Visualisations are forced to become more believable and attractive to serve their purpose, and the outcome is an image that is designed to shape opinion. The deliberate fantastical realities created by visualisations also serve a more straightforward purpose. They are a distraction. They take our attention away from the parts of a country's past it wishes to shed, at least to the outside world. This can be anything from patchy human rights records to industrial-scale deforestation or even all-out conflict. This new strategy does not come without its problems. Photorealism has made it all the easier to create distractions from genuine problems that a project would face. NEOM's portfolio of images sold us a linear city unlike any other, only for "The Line" to be dramatically downsized and almost abandoned entirely. Developers around the world have exploited computer imagery and the newfound capabilities of generative AI to pitch utopian redevelopment projects and masterplans, only for them to be quickly exposed as impossible. The reality is that architectural renders are inherently political images. They have become instruments with which countries are able to reshape their future image with minimal effort. The timescales of megaprojects are heavily susceptible to the swings of a changing world, but one romantic image can go a long way in assuaging fears and projecting resilience. Visualisations act as a reassurance, a backstop that says, "don't worry, everything has been thought through". So the next time you are scrolling and come across a new megaproject, try to find what the image actually wants to tell you but, more importantly, what it wants you to miss. |