Communication between architects and the public has recently increased its reliance on the rendering, or photo-realistic representation, to deliver an experience which is easily sold to the client previous to construction. Considered “more accessible”, this mode of communication negatively effects the architect’s design process and the public’s final experience of constructed environments. This trend in architecture has been paralleled in numerous other fields and even more generally, characterizes our mode of consumption in a modern capitalist economy. We purchase groceries, food, clothes, books, furniture and cars without touching, tasting, smelling or listening. In these visual and virtual transactions we lose a real embodied experience.



image: rendering of the adobe museum, an online museum without a physical presence "designed" by Filippo Innocenti -