从浪漫的废墟到超现实图像：建筑表现的历史
From Romantic Ruins to the Ultra-Real: A History of the Architectural Render

由专筑网邢子，李韧编译

在整个历史进程中，建筑师一直使用草图和绘画向客户展示最终的项目效果。自Brunelleschi在1415年采用绘画视角以来，建筑效果图已经能表达许多理想的超现实景象，在这里，室内的墙壁总是一尘不染，灯光总是纯粹闪耀，居民总是快乐地生活。

随着3D建模和数字渲染技术的进步，这种表达完美建筑效果的形式愈发多样。许多人批评超现实主义作品不切实际的夸张渲染，以及对于项目存在了过多的幻想，因为事实上，项目的问题并没有得到解决。然而，这只是虚幻表现历史的一个发展进程，因为渲染物本身就是一件艺术品。

以下是建筑师们效果图表达的简要历史——从梦幻般的时间旅程到分析图象。

Throughout history, architects have used sketches and paintings to display to their clients the potential outcomes of the projects rattling around their minds. Since Brunelleschi’s adoption of drawn perspective in 1415, architectural visualizations have painted hyper-realistic imaginings of an ideal, where the walls are always clean, the light always shines in the most perfect way, and the inhabitants are always happy.
With technological advances in 3D modeling and digital rendering, this ability to sell an idea through a snapshot of the perfect architectural experience has become almost unrestricted. Many have criticized the dangers of unrealistic renderings that exceed reality and how they can create the illusion of a perfect project when, in fact, it is far from being resolved. However, this is only the natural next step in a history of fantastical representations, where the render becomes a piece of art itself.
Below is a brief history of the interesting ways architects have chosen to depict their projects—from imagined time travel to the diagrammatic.


Gandy的“John Soane英国银行”水彩画／Gandy's Drawing of John Soane's Bank of England

Joseph Michael Gandy的“John Soane英国银行”水彩画，是一个偏离现实的可视化表达著名实例。该作品1830年在皇家艺术学院展出，通过剖面轴测图展示了废墟中的建筑。受Piranesi古罗马遗址图画的启发，银行的图像表达灵感来源于一句话，即 “我想抬起那座美丽建筑的屋顶，将其从内部剖开，就像一块去了皮的馅饼。“这句话来自Alain-RenéLesage的小说《Le Diable Boiteux》，它描述了恶魔在城市屋顶穿越，并展示其下的生活。这幅作品以有趣的方式表达了Soane的项目，表明它将像罗马的废墟一样具有纪念性和永恒性。

One of the most well-known instances of a visualization that deviates from realistic portrayal is Joseph Michael Gandy’s watercolor painting of John Soane’s Bank of England. Exhibited in the Royal Academy in 1830, the artwork is a cutaway axonometric that displays the building seemingly in ruins, centuries into the future. Inspired by Piranesi’s drawings of the ruins of ancient Rome, the visualization of the Bank was displayed with the quotation “I want to lift the roof of that wonderful national building. The interior will be revealed to you like a meat pie with the crust removed.” The quote, taken from Alain-René Lesage’s novel Le Diable Boiteux, describes the devil carrying the protagonist across the city rooftops to expose the life below. The artwork presents Soane’s project in the most flattering light possible, suggesting that it will be as monumental and enduring as the ruins of Rome.


牛顿的纪念碑／Boullée's Cenotaph for Newton, Exterior


牛顿的纪念碑／Boullée's Cenotaph for Newton, Interior

对于Claude-Nicolas Ledoux和étienne-LouisBoullée等其他建筑师而言，他们对未实现项目的可视化表达比实际建造的项目更加出名。Boullée的牛顿纪念碑（1784年）的魅力是对当时绘图水平的强有力证明，在画面中，逐渐消逝的光线照射在表面上，形成完美却短暂的弧形，夜空中巨大的建筑空空荡荡，人类在巨大建筑体量之中如蚂蚁般渺小。每个细节都呈现了几个世纪以来建筑宏大的表现力，并通过纯粹的画面来反映建筑的概念表达。

For other architects such as Claude-Nicolas Ledoux and étienne-Louis Boullée, their visualizations of unrealized projects are far more well-known than those actually constructed. The ongoing fascination and endurance of Boullée’s Cenotaph for Newton (1784) is a testament to the power of the drawing—the way the waning light shines in a perfect, fleeting arc across the surface, the immensity of the night sky captured within its cavernous interior, tiny ant-like people standing immobile within geometric perfection. All these details have captured the architectural imagination for centuries and reflect the influence of conceptual architecture through drawing alone.


贝桑松剧院／Ledoux, Theatre of Besançon

Ledoux最著名的作品是Chaux理想城，但其通过人眼视角而绘制了贝桑松剧院（1775年）则是另一个建筑表现的有趣例子。他当时认为剧场设计并不实用，并计划围绕着街上农民的想法，环绕着活动中心。他通过每个观众的视角强调了舞台的可达性和宏伟感，注重个人的体验。

While Ledoux is possibly most famous for his design of the Ideal City of Chaux, his drawing of his built Theatre of Besançon (1775) through the lens of an eye is another interesting example of architectural representation. He critiqued theatrical design at the time, where it was difficult to see or hear the stage properly, and planned his theatre around the idea of peasants on the street circling the center of the action. His visualization of the eye emphasizes the accessibility and grandeur of the stage through the perspective of each audience member, focusing on the individual’s experience.


格罗皮厄斯研究的等距画图，由Heer-Bayer（1923）绘制／Isometric Drawing of Gropius' Study, Drawn by Herbert Bayer (1923). Image via The Charnel-House

相比之下，20世纪20年代的包豪斯则不同于基于人类视角的可视化，而是主要采用轴测图。 1923年，风格派展览以类似的轴测图风格举办，其表现形式被简化为线条、方形和原色。同一年，格罗皮乌斯宣布包豪斯将放弃传统的“学术观点”而推崇轴测法。从人类视角的可视化表达到鸟瞰轴测图的这种转变与他们的设计哲学相平行，是将建筑物视为特定的如同“机器”般的对象。使用简单的图像线条和色彩反映了当时建筑的极简主义和几何形式。包豪斯的建筑表现方法极大地影响了国际风格和后来的现代派，如勒•柯布西耶（Le Corbusier）。

In contrast, the Bauhaus in the 1920s moved away from visualizations based on the human perspective and instead mainly employed axonometric drawings. In 1923 the De Stijl exhibition was held featuring axonometric drawings in a similar style: representations abstracted into simply line, square and primary colors. The same year, Gropius declared that the Bauhaus would be discarding the old “academic perspective” in favor of the axonometric. This shift from visualizations at the human scale to axonometric drawings seen from above paralleled their design philosophy by shifting towards the idea of buildings as objects, as a “machine” to be dissected. The use of simple, diagrammatic line and color mirrored the minimalist and geometric forms of their architecture. The Bauhaus method of architectural representation hugely influenced the International Style and later Modernists such as Le Corbusier.


Archigram的步行城市提案／Archigram's Walking City proposal. Image courtesy of Deutsches Architekturmuseum


新纽约，1969。这张图是展览“绘画氛围：Alvin Boyarsky和建筑协会”的一部分／New-New York, 1969. This drawing was displayed as part of the exhibition "Drawing Ambience: Alvin Boyarsky and the Architectural Association" © Superstudio. Image Courtesy of Collection of the Alvin Boyarsky Archive

在20世纪60年代，激进团体深受流行文化的影响，开始使用拼贴、摄影和图像并置的手法。可以说是这些团体中最知名的建筑电讯学派（Archigram）使用蒙太奇、漫画和图形文字来表达项目。他们的风格涉及喧闹的未来城市，在那里有着熟悉和陌生的融合。另一个激进团体是位于佛罗伦萨的Superstudio，其概念“连续纪念碑（The Continuous Monument）”被设想为一种“负面乌托邦”，来警告他们所看到的建筑的潜在未来。该项目图像由遍布整个世界的巨大白色网格组成，它表达了对全球化的批判，并反对破坏个性和本土文化。使用流行媒体来表达项目让公众更易于接受，这与他们打算将建筑作为社交和政治评论工具的意图相关。

In the 1960s, radical groups were heavily influenced by popular culture and began using collage, photography and juxtapositions of images to create meaning in their representations. Archigram, arguably the most well-known of these groups, used montage, comic strips, and graphic text to convey their projects. Their style evoked a boisterous futuristic city where the familiar and unfamiliar merge. Another one of these radical groups was the Florence-based Superstudio whose concept ‘The Continuous Monument’ was envisaged as a “negative utopia” to warn against what they saw as architecture's potential future. Consisting of a huge white grid spread across the entire world—a blanket architecture enveloping the planet—it acted as a critique of globalization and the destruction of individuality and local culture. The use of popular media to display their projects created an architecture that was more accessible and exciting to the general public, which was relevant to their intention to use architecture as a tool for social and political critique.


The Peak - 1983. Image © Zaha Hadid

在80年代和90年代，扎哈•哈迪德（Zaha Hadid）和彼得•艾森曼（Peter Eisenman）等解构主义者通过将绘画作为程序设计的手段，进一步脱离了现实写照的作品风格。他们从语言学和解构主义哲学中提炼出想法，其绘画和建筑本身也对客观性以及公认的建筑语言表达了质疑，并在表达中使用抽象的图解法。扎哈•哈迪德认为这样能够“摆脱某些教条主义”。同样，在艾森曼的住宅系列中，他将他的作品描述为“真正的建筑”，并将住宅当做表达其概念的媒介，而2D建筑表现本身就变成了“真实”的建筑作品。

In the 80s and 90s, deconstructivists such as Zaha Hadid and Peter Eisenman moved further away from realistic portrayals of their work by using the drawing as a means towards procedural design. Drawing their ideas from post-structuralist discourse in linguistics and philosophy, their drawings and architecture themselves questioned objectivity and the accepted architectural language. The use of abstraction in representation allowed for an interpretive approach to deciphering drawings. Zaha Hadid describing this as “moving away from certain dogmas about what architecture is.” Similarly, in Eisenman’s House series, he describes his drawings as the “real architecture” and the constructed houses as simply a medium through which the conceptual house becomes possible. The 2D architectural representation becomes the “real,” a work of architecture in itself.


印度‘新州府’阿马拉瓦蒂政府规划方案／Amaravati Government Complex. Image Courtesy of Foster + Partners

纵观整个历史，建筑可视化中的表现方式往往极大地影响了建筑项目。在当代世界中，我们可以轻松制作3D模型和照片般逼真的渲染图像。而建筑教育也对图形表现变得愈发重视，虽然这些与技术发展联系紧密，但它也能够从某种程度上减少建筑师的工作量，因为可以使用模型和渲染图来阐述设计和概念。

Throughout history, the manner of representation in architectural visualizations has often greatly influenced the architecture created. In the contemporary world, the ease at which we can craft 3D forms and photo-realistic renders has a huge impact on the resulting construction. Even architectural pedagogy focuses more and more on the graphic representation rather than the architecture itself. Although this is often blamed on current technology, it has only made it easier to do what architects have done since the very beginning: use illusion and interpretation to sell their designs and concepts.