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Paper Architecture: Diversity of Drawing Styles Hint at New Directions for Visualization
CategoriesArchitecture

Paper Architecture: Diversity of Drawing Styles Hint at New Directions for Visualization

By Zarkon Group,

We are thrilled to announce the winners of Architizer’s inaugural Vision Awards, the world’s biggest awards program dedicated to the art of architectural representation. Sign up to receive future program updates >  

Drawing is a reflection of how we imagine new futures. When we leave spaces and lines open to different interpretations, it gives room for diverse meanings and ideas. In turn, drawing styles are wide-ranging, from sketching and more technical techniques to colorful collages and more. The style that a designer or artist chooses gives way to different readings of light, space, form and place.

Celebrating diversity and ingenuity in different drawing styles, Architizer launched the Vision Awards to recognize the students, professionals and studios that are boldly envisioning architecture. The following work represents the winning entries in a variety of categories, all exploring different drawing styles today. From hand drawing to computer-aided and more, they illustrate how to bring buildings and cities to life. Each visionary work is accompanied by the text teams submitted to give context to their drawings or further provoke new readings of the work.

The Last Resort

By Nikhita Sivakumar, Student Winner, 2023 Vision Awards, Hand Drawn Drawing 

“The Last Resort, a black hole observatory located in Greenwich Park, is a testament to humanity’s quest for survival and a gateway between alternate dimensions. As the stars emerge each night, the observatory awakens, physicists gathering within hallowed halls and pooling centuries of knowledge into one goal: seeking an inter-dimensional refuge in the race against our planet’s dying climate.

Scientists turn to the God Particle monument, a historic symbol of faith that bridges metaphysical understanding with spiritual reflection. The engineering facility, buried below the surface, aims to develop a voyager that may embark on this journey, whilst the telescope above decodes the nature of Sagittarius A*, located at the galactic centre of our own Milky Way. The Last Resort exists to bind science with the spiritual, drawing on the hope that brings these two worlds together.”

The Iceberg

By CEBRA architecture, Studio Winner, 2023 Vision Awards, Hand Drawn Drawing 

“The Iceberg is among the first completed projects in the redevelopment of Aarhus’ former container port for 7,000 residents and 12,000 workplaces, spanning 800,000 meters square — one of Europe’s largest harborfront developments. The client, PensionDanmark, assigned CEBRA to maximize views and sunlight for every apartment. Challenging the master plan of closed blocks, The Iceberg consists of four L-shaped wings. The street spaces between the parallel wings open towards the water.

Founding Partner Mikkel Frost used watercolor to create a cartoonish concept drawing merging ancient techniques and contemporary styles, uniting problem-solving with artistic ambition. To obtain optimal daylight conditions and views over the bay, the angled volumes are cut up by a jagged roof profile. The structure offers well-arranged lighting and views to most apartments — even in the back row. The simple algorithm in the design created a stunning structure of eleven white peaks — like a floating iceberg.”

Fable or Failure

By Alexander Jeong and Brandon Hing, Student Winners, 2023 Vision Awards, Computer Aided Drawing

This imaginative drawing “Fable or Failure” by Alexander Jeong and Brandon Hing won the 2023 Architizer Vision Award for a Student Drawing in the Computer Aided category. Jeong and Hing’s rendering reimagines a multitude of fantastical scenarios through space travel. As the duo notes, “Fable or Failure is a project that seeks to reimagine how space travel can be conceptualized in the distant future of societal development.” Taking the shape of an exploded axonometric drawing, the winning entry uses black, white and grey linework and shading, as well as a single color to denote outer space.

Together, Jeong and Hing are curious in how a visualization can pose questions of space, community and gathering. “Will space travel be dominated by the rich and corrupt with the ability to experience otherworldly and transformative events, commodifying it? Can we imagine a future of space travel dominated by imaginative individuals or kids, optimistic in carrying the hopes of the future of the earth with them to space? Through three distinct parts: navigation, archival and extension, the organization of the shuttle is designed for a plethora of humanity’s desires in space travel.”

Amsterdam City Centre Pub

By Olivia O’Callaghan, Student Creator Of The Year, 2023 Vision Awards

“Where do we go when we read? The pub designed for Amsterdam’s city centre aims to answer this, creating a bar residing in the metaphysical, that through its drawings invite you in, wherever you may be visiting the pub from. The pencil drawings emerge from data collected within the site at dusk when the pub opens. Small devices constructed from black mirrors and poetic fragments were taken to the site at this time and created textual openings to it, using the fragments as locators.

As the site darkened, the black mirrors became more intangible and only came to life out of the amorphous backdrop when aligned with the light from the surrounding nightlife. The data collected by these models at their points of activation became the information from which to tease out a sublime architecture dwelling in the textual world, activating the imagination just as reading does. But, just as when we become aware of the flow of our own reading, we lose access to the imagination of the text, and the entry to the bar. This is a bar that serves up drinks that intoxicate the imagination imagination and make visitors drunk from words alone.

The work aims to use the architect’s imagination as a field of play for data collection of responses to the site that becomes reworked through drawings. All the drawings are created and worked into simultaneously, creating a world in the drawings that is fully realized. Some drawings work to describe how the architecture looks whereas others, through their process, aim to investigate how the architecture operates.

I invite you now to look at the drawings and in visiting and revisiting them, entertain you and draw you in to the pub. The drawings become a condition of entry to the bar.”

VENUE ID PINKLAO-SALAYA “Shirakawa-go”

By LWD.Co.,Ltd, Studio Winner, 2023 Vision Awards, Computer Aided Drawing

“Underlining the idea that CAD drawings can be done in many different styles, the drawing VENUE ID PINKLAO-SALAYA “Shirakawa-go” by LWD.Co was the Vision Awards Studio Winner this year for Computer Aided Drawing. As the team outlines, it was made as an “inspired design that tells the story of a beautiful farming village nestled in the valley alongside the Shokawa River, where one might find an old house reminiscent of a childhood fairy tale.” Reading like a comic, the juxtaposition of angles, moments and frames moves the eye through the drawing and text.

LWD.Co. wanted to create an illustration that highlights the architectural design of Gassho-zukuri houses. “Built using the same architectural characteristics as traditional houses, this design employs the architectural style called Gassho-zukuri. Gassho means hands folded together in prayer. The distinctive feature of this traditional Japanese architectural style is the large gable roof that looks like hands folded together. This creates a beautiful blend between the wooden Japanese frame and the architectural style of a traditional Thai house. This combination is perfect for the hot and humid climate of Thailand; the elevated structure which creates a faux-basement space underneath the house is just one of the unique characteristics of Thai-style houses.”

Treehouses Without Trees

By Thomas Wells Schaller, Professional Winner, 2023 Vision Awards, Hand Drawn Drawing 

“There is a universe of possibility that spans the distance between what we look at and what we see. And in that space is our experience of the world. This is what I try to paint — the experience of seeing my world — from perspectives both external and from within. And as such, dreams, memories, and pure imagination are every bit as valid as is anything that can be physically observed.”

Thomas W. Schaller is an artist, architect, and author based in New York City. This work, Treehouses Without Trees, was created in response to lockdowns and inspired by the works of writer Ishiguro. It is a study of connection and isolation, the triumph of aspiration and resource over circumstance, and the looming prospect of an unknown future in a world under siege.

We are thrilled to announce the winners of Architizer’s inaugural Vision Awards, the world’s biggest awards program dedicated to the art of architectural representation. Sign up to receive future program updates >  

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A.I. Will Destroy Creativity – But Only If We Let It
CategoriesArchitecture

A.I. Will Destroy Creativity – But Only If We Let It

By Zarkon Group,

Judging for the 11th A+Awards is now underway! While awaiting the Winners, learn more about Architizer’s Vision Awards. The Main Entry Deadline on June 9th is fast approaching. Start your entry today >

For the 2023 Vision Awards, Architizer has divided the Best Architectural Visualization category into three sub-categories: Photorealistic, Illustrative/Artistic, and A.I. generated. This last one has predictably raised eyebrows.

On Facebook, a reader named Milena Tos asked how someone could possibly win an award for an image created by an A.I. program. “What is going to be the criteria?” Tos asked. “Who picked the best image from 50 images that Midjourney created in a few minutes?”

Their comment ended with a provocation: “An architect who writes a prompt does exactly what clients do – give ‘prompts’ to architects. Is Edgar Kaufmann an author of Fallingwater?” 

The implication was clear – and haunting. The specter of A.I. threatens to make architects irrelevant, as it does with so many other professions. Maybe not today… maybe not tomorrow… but still, the ax looms. Why make A.I.’s takeover easier by validating its visuals with awards?

Prompt: “Midjourney as it imagines itself.” Created by Midjourney v. 4. Chikorita, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Our Editor-in-Chief Paul Keskeys mused a thoughtful response to Tos’s questions, noting first that generating a great prompt is not as simple as it looks, and second that great A.I. images are often the result of “refinements” within the A.I. program. They’re not, in other words, just the first thing the program spits out. The winning A.I. visualization for the 2023 Vision Awards will likely be one created under the guidance of a person with a real sense for architecture. 

Still, Keskeys conceded that A.I. has lowered the barrier to entry for architectural thinking. “I don’t think everyone is going to become ‘the architect’ of their own houses overnight,” he said, “but these tools do make ideation accessible to a far greater number of people, so it will be intriguing to see where that takes us…”

I agree with Keskeys that it will be intriguing to watch how architecture and other creative disciplines evolve now that A.I. programs like Midjourney exist alongside more familiar digital tools. I applaud Architizer for including A.I. generated images in the Vision Awards, as this type of work deserves critical scrutiny and analysis. It is nothing if not relevant and should not be ignored.

Nevertheless — and I cannot stress this point strongly enough — I loathe A.I. and wish that it did not exist. I also don’t think it’s actually “intelligent” for reasons that have been discussed widely by other writers. (By “A.I” here I mean these new neural network programs with the uncanny ability to mimic human creative labor. I’m not talking about Google Search or the calculator).

I don’t think I am alone here. I suspect that many people feel an aversion to A.I. but are afraid to express it. They don’t want to be seen as a reactionary or a Luddite, like the 19th century painters who feared that their skill set would be replaced by photography. 

It is understandable that people want to avoid taking an old fashioned position and subsequently being swept into the dustbin of history. But this hang up is preventing us from thinking clearly right now. It must be abandoned for two reasons. 

Prompt: “White castle with a magenta roof, two gardens in the front yard and a golden statue in the middle of the front yard, 4k, Renaissance.” via Midjourney v. 4 Mhatopzz, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

First of all, an accurate reckoning with history must begin by acknowledging that the painters were correct. Painting today has nowhere near the commercial application that it did 150 years ago, and as a result fewer people are learning how to paint. A whole sphere of human creativity withered on the vine, just as predicted. Luckily, it was replaced by a new, equally rich creative medium. You or I might not lament the advent of photography, but it is easy to understand why people did so in the past. Technology really can transform how people live, think, and create. 

The second reason is more significant. This has to do with what these neural networks essentially are, that is, the specific processes by which they generate these uncannily humanlike texts and images. Indeed, the more one learns about how A.I. works, the more ominous it seems. If it changes us, it seems that this change could not possibly be for the good. 

A.I. is nothing like the camera. It is nothing like the printing press, the Internet or any of the other “disruptive” technologies it is often compared to. Unlike these technologies, A.I. is philosophically insidious. It does not simply change the means by which people create, but undermines the very foundations of creativity itself.

To understand why, let’s begin with the camera. What is a camera? The camera is a tool for documenting objects in the world. A photograph does not, of course, provide a clear window onto reality but, like a painting, presents a necessarily limited, curated perspective, that of the artist or artists. In this, photography is the same as every other artistic medium; it is an imperfect tool for representing reality objectively that, through its imperfections, allows the subjectivity of the artist to shine through.  

What is a Large Language Model like Chat GPT or an Image Model like Midjourney? These are machines that boil down a vast amount of data drawn from the Internet in order to perceive statistical patterns. They then use these patterns to predict likely outputs for user generated prompts. In essence, they show you what they think you want to see based on averages. As the artist Hito Steyerl writes in “Mean Images,” her brilliant essay for The New Left Review, “They represent the norm by signaling the mean. They replace likeness with likeliness.” 

Prompt Unkown. City landscape generated by Midjourney v. 4. Artist: Kent Madsen. via Wikimedia Commons

Whose subjectivity is expressed in a work generated by A.I.? In one sense all of ours — a hive mind. Like a vampire, the machine feeds on the labor of millions of faceless artists, stripping away everything that is unique about their work. Even if one tweaks the prompts to create outputs that appear novel, they are still “mean images,” or statistical representations of some kind of common denominator. At best, they are emissaries from the collective unconscious. At worst, they are stereotypes, and indeed Steyerl draws a connection between the way A.I. image generation works and the composite portraits created by eugenicist Francis Galton.

In the 1880s, Galton created images of racial “types” by superimposing hundreds of faces on top of each other, blurring out the details and leaving only the common denominators, the features that members of these racial groups had in common.  That is to say he created racist caricatures but gave them the imprimatur of science.

It is not simply Galton’s aim we should deplore, but his method as well. There is an intrinsic violence in the process of generalization, which is the process of flattening difference to conform with ideological presuppositions. And this is how these A.I. programs work — this is what they do, fundamentally and by definition. 

In a photograph or drawing, the thing itself inevitably escapes, often to the chagrin of the artist. However, in an A.I. rendering, the thing itself is not even a relevant reference point. What you are looking at is not an interpretative view of an object or an idea, but a model of patterns in the data. An A.I. visualization of a building may look like a digital rendering created by an artist, but categorically it is a very different type of object.

A.I. is not creative and it is not intelligent; it is just the newest method for packaging human labor in the mystifying form of a commodity. As I see it, the most immediate danger with A.I. is not that it will take our jobs, although for many this is a risk. It is that we will become too used to using these programs and interacting with their outputs. Little by little, we will begin to think like them. Data will replace thought as our most familiar model of reality, our window onto the world.

To loop back to our starting point, Architzer is right to include A.I. images in its Vision Awards. This is a new species of image that we, as a society, are going to have to learn how to live with whether we like it or not. But readers are also right to have their suspicions. While it might be futile to try to stop technology in its tracks, it is foolish to pretend that the outcomes of technological progress are always benign. They aren’t, and this is one of the most philosophically troubling innovations yet.

Judging for the 11th A+Awards is now underway! While awaiting the Winners, learn more about Architizer’s Vision Awards. The Main Entry Deadline on June 9th is fast approaching. Start your entry today >

Cover image: Prompt: ” a low quality disposable camera fujifilm photo of a glowing female cyborg and glowing male cyborg standing motionless together staring into the camera dramatically in a 2000s nightclub, vintage rave lighting, motion blur” via Midjourney v4. Cameron Butler, CC BY-SA 4.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0>, via Wikimedia Commons

Reference

Paper Architecture: What’s the Point?
CategoriesArchitecture

Paper Architecture: What’s the Point?

By Zarkon Group,

Architizer’s Vision Awards is a global awards program for architectural media and representation, recognizing the world’s best architectural photographs, videos, visualizations, drawings and models, and the creators behind them. Enter for a chance to see your work published in print: Start Entry > 

At first glance, one might assume the question posed in the title of this article is a rhetorical one. With a growing number of industry leaders advocating — with good reason — for students and young architects to receive more real-world construction experience, you could be forgiven for thinking that conceptual projects are a distraction, getting in the way of the invaluable education awaiting designers on the building site.

Make no mistake, though — anyone who tells you paper architecture is pointless needs reminding:

Ideas are the lifeblood of architecture.

Behind each award-winning project we see come to fruition each year, there lie countless sketches, models, and renderings created during the design process, as well as unrealized, theoretical concepts, commonly known as paper architecture. At their best, unbuilt architectural projects — just like their constructed counterparts —  hold the potential to tell a powerful story, communicate fresh concepts and advance our profession through ideation.

Left: “Mind Palace” by Mylan Thuroczy, Manchester School of Architecture; right: “Break and Float” by Michael Turner; finalists in Architizer’s One Drawing Challenge competition.

These architectural images, and the ideas they embody, are worth their weight in proverbial gold to the next generation of architects. From the outlandish drawings of Archigram to the abstract paintings of Zaha Hadid, conceptual works form a vibrant exhibition of ideas and inspiration, each contributing to the global discourse over the advancement of the profession and our built environment as a whole.

For this reason, it’s vital that we provide a platform to recognize architectural ideas and visual creations, no matter whether they are built or not.

Enter the Architizer Vision Awards. This brand new awards program is designed to celebrate every form of paper architecture — from napkin sketches and lost competition entries to thesis projects and early models — and give them the global spotlight, now and long into the future.

Enter the Vision Awards

Vision Awards Winners will be published in the inaugural ‘Visions of Architecture’ Anthology, as well as being celebrated year-round through innovative storytelling by Architizer’s team of architectural writers. Film Winners will be premiered in Architizer’s first ever Architectural Film Festival, a unique digital event to air later this year. Every Winner and Finalist will be exhibited on Architizer’s iconic Winners’ Gallery, the definitive directory of world-class architecture and design and an evergreen source of inspiration for the profession.

“Concrete Atla(nti)s” by Hannah Christy and Craig Findlay, University of Nebraska-Lincoln; Winner in Architizer’s One Drawing Challenge

Showcasing the Unending Value of Paper Architecture

Whether it is ultimately realized or not, paper architecture is a critical creative outlet for the profession. Drawings, renderings and models provide a perpetual record of the ideation process that architects go through when developing concepts, offering insights into how they approached design problems in the past. To honor the many mediums of architectural ideation, Vision Awards categories include:

  • Best Architectural Drawing
    (2 categories: Hand-drawn, Computer-aided)
  • Best Architecture Model
    (Special category for physical models)
  • Best Architectural Visualization
    (3 categories: Photorealistic, Illustrative/Artistic, AI-Generated)
  • Architectural Visualizer of the Year
    (Portfolio award for studios and professionals)
  • Architect Creator of the Year
    (Mixed media portfolio award for professionals)
  • Student Creator of the Year
    (Mixed media portfolio award for students)

Together with categories for architectural photography and video, these awards will honor the best in architectural representation today, including the most compelling examples of paper architecture. By entering their work, architects can help to build a rich archive of ideas and designs that will motivate future generations of architects and push the boundaries of what is possible in the built environment.

Left: “The Built Pension” by Yehan Zheng; right: HIGH- RISE TOPOLOGY. Infrastructure for energy creation” by Daniel Garzon; Finalists in Architizer’s One Drawing Challenge competition.

A Second Life for ‘Lost Projects’

The Vision Awards presents a golden opportunity for architects to showcase their unbuilt works, including former competition entries, speculative creations, and drawings or models for projects that stalled due to forces outside of their control. There are countless reasons why many brilliant architectural projects are ultimately left on the drawing board: budget cuts, site complications, changes in a client’s strategy or direction, or even some larger and impossible to foresee — like the COVID-19 pandemic.

Sometimes, an initial design might contain ideas that are ahead of their time, or deemed too ambitious to be realized when first conceived. Revisiting these ideas in the context of the Vision Awards may inspire new approaches to architecture in future, as new technologies emerge and changing social conditions give rise to new creative possibilities.

By bringing the best unrealized projects and conceptual designs together through the Vision Awards, Architizer is aiming to create a powerful repository of ideas, one that can be a touchstone for emerging architects long into the future. By entering their work for the program, architects can help to build on the legacy of the great ‘paper architects’, contributing to the ongoing creative conversation that fuels the wider profession.

If you are an advocate for the power of paper architecture and its potential to advance the profession, the Vision Awards needs you. Submit your most innovative work before the Main Entry Deadline on June 16th, and let your ideas and those of your firm inspire the next generation of architects!

Start Entry

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