A series of three-dimensional drawings can orchestrate a sense of looking around or through an image. Spatial sequences can be used to explain an important aspect of the design concept, such as a route through the building or the means of access and entry to it.
Space and light and order. Those are the things that men need just as much as they need bread or a place to sleep.
Le Corbusier
Project: Clone House Location: Conceptual Architects: CJ Lim / Studio 8 Date: 1999
This series of three-dimensional images describe a variety of permutations for CJ Lim’s Clone House layout. The layout is a series of four rooms that can be configured in a variety of arrangements. The three-dimensional image, alongside associated plan diagrams, explains these arrangements.
One of the easiest ways to create a sense of reality with an architectural idea is to create photomontage. This technique produces a composite image by cutting, joining and layering a number of other photographs.
In terms of architectural representation, a photomontage image takes an existing view and superimposes onto it a view of a scheme, building or design. A photomontage could be a perspective view or a view of the scheme’s plans or elevations.
The photomontage technique can be so seamless that the viewer can ‘believe’ the proposed idea. The power of photomontage is that it combines actual photographs or impressions of places with imagined ideas of architecture, and the resultant image looks ‘real’. Photomontage images are an important means to convince the viewer that the architecture can respond to its site or context effectively.
Traditionally, architectural photomontages were created by photographing a view of a site as well as a physical model of a proposed scheme. These two photographs were then layered on top of one another (the photograph of the model would overlay that of the site), which produced a realistic impression of the scheme. Now, with software programmes such as Photoshop, a digital image of the site can have an image of a CAD model or physical model superimposed on it to create an impression of the final scheme.
If architecture had nothing to do with art, it would be astonishingly easy to build houses, but the architect’s task – his most difficult task – is always that of selecting.
Arne Jacobsen