These images represent a series of fully resolved conceptual designs for an apartment building on a 50 × 70-foot site in San Diego. Each image is based on a working plan and responds to the zoning and planning requirements established by the City of San Diego for a specific site. As the project evolved, the exploration expanded to consider how these buildings might be perceived in other times and places. With recent advancements in digital rendering, I was able to quickly explore numerous contextual variations. These studies reveal the power of context and its ability to transform perception.
For me, this project has already reached fruition. These images are not a record of a place; they are the record of an idea.
In many ways, this exploration is more compelling than the prospect of construction. The freedom to imagine offers a level of creative discovery that is rarely possible once a project enters the realities of budgets, regulations, approvals, and physics. These images are a record of that process—an enhanced visual history of the idea.
I have created renderings for hundreds of projects. Many were never built. Unbuilt architecture can be just as important as the things that are built. Some of the most meaningful projects I have worked on exist only as ideas preserved through images.
Every work of architecture is built twice: first as an idea, then as a place. For most people, it is experienced only once—through an image. As spatial computing and immersive digital technologies evolve, the boundary between representation and experience will continue to diminish. The technologies that shape imagery today may ultimately influence how we experience architecture as profoundly as architecture itself.
