Is this article serious? Architectural renders aren't meant to convince anyone they're actually real. They're meant to show a representation of what the end result will/should look like. See them as concept drawings or elaborate wireframes.

Medium has jumped the shark.

a buddy of mine is a city planner. said that the people in these renders are intentionally unrealistic and usually transparent. this is so the viewer can focus on the background and imagine how people might one day use the space. also, they're done by city planners, not graphic artists.

Legitimately thought this was satire at first. I've helped with these kind of renders, no one viewing the end result is going to be zooming in like this to check out the placeholder figures.

What's really frustrating with this post is, "Does function triumph design in this case?"

At what point did she actually talk about design?

I wouldn’t think about it too much. The attention to detail of the people is unimportant, it’s the renders that matter.

I’d much rather architects concentrate on the architecting then peoplifying.

(there may be some made up words here)

Is this a real article?

I have been an Architectural Visualiser for 5 years. This is the most ignorant post I have ever seen.

Adrienne has absolutely no idea what she is talking about. We are give almost zero time to do our work. For example sometimes I am booked for a week to render and photoshop an image. In the end the client give me the files and direction 1 day before it's due. It can be extremely stressful to work under such time pressure all the time and it's not nice when someone is critical and they don't know what they are talking about.

What an absolutely misguided "article"...

Poe's law at work.

Yikes

What I wanna know is, who's hiring the design software Photoshop to do our city planning!

Oftentimes architecture projects are given to one of many studios chosen in a competition. That means only one of the competing companies get’s to build the project. Which in turn leaves all the others with a lot of unpaid time invested in the planning. These renderings therefore have ridiculously small budgets. They are also mostly produced very close to the deadline, because you need to finish all the plans before you can start on the final renderings. So you have very little time and budget to get these renderings out of the door. If you got your priorities straight you won’t waste to much of your precious time on photoshopping something most people will likely never notice and you will never be paid for.

Interesting observation. But I guess the quality is relative as in any business that uses design. Bjarke Ingels Group is a good example of how it can look much better http://www.big.dk/#projects

How do you think?