It's pretty amazing what playing with scale can do. Altered or skewed renderings, with an agenda, have become just another field on which the deathmatch between developers and neighbors plays out. The Times observes that an (admittedly sort of dated) architects' version of Brooklyn waterfront megaproject Greenpoint Landing depicts the buildings as 10 silvery towers; meanwhile, opposition group Save Greenpoint has come out with the inset version, which portrays them as larger than life (okay, than the Empire State Building), a garish red color, and indubitably more bulky. Renderings, in this case, are not so much a vision of what reality will be as they are a vehicle that parties with vested interests can use to convey their goals. "[I]ts [a rendering's] most important mission is not to show the girth of a building's footprint or the shape of the windows, it is to gin up enthusiasm for a project, or to incite resistance," the Times observes. "So the real purpose of these drawings is not to predict the future. Their real goal is to control it." We have seen the winners of the Real Estate Hunger Games, my friends, and it is the dudes who make the renderings.
· Art for Argument's Sake: Architects' Renderings as a Weapon in Real Estate [NYT]
· Greenpoint Landing coverage [Curbed]
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