The City of Renderings. Photorealism, spectacle and abstraction in contemporary urban landscapes

Abstract

Photorealistic renderings of architectural designs are now pervasive in media of every kind and regarded as indispensable in the world of architecture at every level. They occupy a space between architecture and photography whose mixing of virtual and real, production and re-production, entails a series of implicit premises and results that are generally taken for granted, conveying a markedly spectacular vision of the city and of architecture. After discussing the reasons for the growing use of photorealism in architecture, the paper presents and analyzes the main categories of photorealistic renderings and their recurrent characteristics, with the aim of showing how the most evident aspects of these images correspond to a range of tendencies in contemporary architecture. The essay, in addition, puts forward some reflections on the relationship between photorealistic renderings and architecture, the reality of construction and society.