The human element
Fill your visualizations with life, because at the end of the day, architecture always serves the people who use it.
Those who design urban spaces primarily design living spaces – an aspect that is all too often ignored in real estate marketing. When it comes to square meters and rights of way, people become interested parties or contractual partners, and families become target groups. This is reflected not least in the 3D visualizations. Initially, abstract silhouettes of human silhouettes were often integrated into the renderings to illustrate proportions and bring the somewhat wooden architectural visualizations of the late 1990s to life, but with increasing photorealism, interest in the human component waned. What’s the point? The images are atmospheric and polished, and a poorly integrated photo of a person with the wrong lighting and brightly colored clothes only ruins the otherwise flawless architectural staging. And that’s what it’s all about: selling a property – the elderly lady on the balcony is not included in the purchase price.
Too short-sighted, we think. Every building is closely related to its surroundings – especially in a social context. If we only see the building standing alone in front of us, we miss a large part of its function. Life in and around the newly designed space ultimately determines how we perceive and judge the architecture.
Making this surrounding life visible even before a property is built is one of the most challenging and exciting aspects of architectural visualization and involves many creative and conceptual processes, from the definition of social structures to the representation of these and their interaction with the architecture, which have a strong impact on the final image result. Some things result from the planned use, the target group or existing structures, while others have to be completely rethought.
Particularly in large-scale projects such as urban development or public buildings, the social context plays an overriding role before the spatial design and is an important part of the architectural concept.
Visual storytelling
Together with our clients, we take a step back and imagine the design not as an island on white paper, but as what it is: a redesign of the space around the property. How do you perceive the building when you see it from a distance? How will it fit into the existing environment and how will people and social life interact with it – what role will the new space play in the social context?
Once these questions have been answered, we begin to create the context virtually. To do this, we model the surroundings either abstractly or in detail and look for exciting perspectives and visual axes that incorporate the space around the building project. We also integrate people in the form of photos or 3D-scanned models.
This creates exciting and unexpected views that stand out from the usual architectural visualizations, in which the properties are always presented in a picture-filling manner, and which are a pleasant contrast to the standardized all-rounders on the real estate portals.
And what is particularly important is that the depiction of people not only makes it possible to visualize proportions, but above all to tell stories. Children playing, strollers, recreational athletes, hectic business people – they all subtly convey an overall context that contributes to a better understanding of the spatial design and its surroundings.
