Building (with) Pictures : The Confusing Fluency of Architectural Photorealism

This study explores the practice of photorealistic architectural visualization with regard to its technical underpinnings and cultural implications. In recent decades, pictures that mimic photographic documents have become a standard way to present architecture projects to the lay public. In critical and academic contexts, by contrast, photorealistic visualisation is customarily bypassed as a form of superficial illustration that has no significant bearing on truly architectural ideation. Through my study, I argue that photorealistic architectural visualisation should not be embraced as fluent communication nor dismissed as trivial pictorial representation. It is shown that both attitudes rely on questionable assumptions about pictorial realism as the straightforward imitation of visual reality. I develop my interpretation of photorealism by analysing the graphical user interfaces of common architectural software. On current 3D platforms, architecture is habitually inspected through operations that simulate photography: it is through an imaginary camera that architecture is made visible for the software user so that it can be assessed and worked on. I argue that the aim of photographic veracity is thus built into the digitalised toolkit of present-day architecture. Hence, instead of being a stylistic feature of pictures, architectural photorealism is better understood as a pivotal way of working on architecture – a common sense of digitalised architecture. Drawing on philosophical and art historical critiques of pictorial realism, I argue that the apparent naturalness of photorealistic operations cannot be accounted for in terms of visual imitation. Instead, the practical fluency of architectural photorealism builds on simulations of entrenched pictorial and architectural conventions. It is argued that as an artificial conglomeration of realist techniques photorealism ingrains largely held assumptions about the relationship of visual perception, pictures, and architectural space. Therefore, photorealistic architectural visualisation can be studied as a reserve of both pictorial and architectural ideals that implicitly guide the current production of built environment. It is under the cover of its seemingly trivial verisimilitude that photorealism can assume such an instrumental, and, frequently, misleading, role in architectural culture. Through my exploration, I challenge architects to develop new techniques of visualisation that would depart from the conventional commitments of photorealism. At the same time, however, my study underlines the vastness of the challenge: pictorial realism is more deeply rooted in architectural culture than the recent critics of photorealism have been ready to admit.