from pastelegram.org, June 2011 – April 2014
feature
RNDRD:
Wireframe Aesthetic
February 14, 2012
Kazuo Shinohara. Japan Architect 61 September 1986: 7.
Though designers and architects were using computer-aided design software since the early 1970s, the software to produce graphic renderings—which architects commonly produce at their own cost for client presentations and trade publications—was not commercially available until the 1980s.1 In the 1970s, larger architecture firms often used CAD software to produce construction drawings used by the builders on site. At the time hourly access to large mainframe computer systems was simply too expensive for the production of anything but these bread-and-butter drawings. Even after the introduction of the personal computer in the early 1980s, advanced three-dimensional modeling software was only financially feasible for the most established architecture firms at first. Thus, computer-made renderings only began to appear in design publications during the middle-to-late 1980s.
Tadao Ando. SD 300 September 1989: 15.
Tadao Ando. L’Architecture D’Aujourd’Hui 268 April 1990: 147.
It is difficult to immediately recognize early computer renderings by architects, particularly since it isn't common practice for design journals to describe the medium of a rendering. The three examples above, by Kazuo Shinohara and Tadao Ando, are certainly computer generated. They contain many of the formal elements common to early computer-generated images, such as heavy pixelation, light-colored “wireframe” outlining over dark backgrounds, flat or simple-gradient color fields, and a kind of out-of-focus low-resolution effect that occurs when one must take a film photograph of a computer’s CRT monitor display.
Interestingly, many of these characteristics were also common in non-computer rendering from the time. In fact, the wireframe as a design idea appears in architecture well before and during the onset of the microcomputer revolution.
Gunnar Birkerts. Progressive Architecture 54 Mar 1973: 73.
Conrad Wachsmann. Domus 302 Jan 1955: 5.
Chamberlin Powell Bon. Architectural Design 26 September 1956: 297.
Cesar Pelli. Domus 468 Nov 1968:18.
Bernard Tschumi. A+U 216 Sep 1988: 54.
Soria and Lezenes. L’Architecture D’Aujourd’Hui 231 Feb 1984: 52.
The wireframe aesthetic communicates several ideas:
Like the wire armature under a plaster sculpture or the steel frame of a skyscraper, the wireframe symbolizes the idea of pure structure.
Like the scaffolding and tower cranes that occupy the city, the wireframe symbolizes impermenance, revolution and dynamic living.
Like the perfect sketches we make on napkins to sell ideas to each other, the wireframe is neither vague nor clear. Rather it abstracts ideas just enough to summon infinite interpretations.
Archigram AD 37 Oct 1967:479.
Fumio Enomoto SD 315 Dec 1990: 33.
Le Corbusier Domus 288 Nov 1953: 3.
The rendering embodies the essential design idea. The highest aspiration of the architect is to have the finished building reach the level of clarity of a perfect rendering, in terms of its ability to convey an idea.
Michael Szyszkowitz and Karla Kowalski. A+U 238 Jul 1990:135.
Neil Denari. A+U 246 Mar 1991:40.
Peter Eisenman. A+U 232 Jan 1990: 150.
This article’s publication coincides with the re-launch of rndrd.com, a frequently-updated online image archive of 20th century architectural renderings culled from out-of-print academic and trade journals.
- 1. The most important developments emanated from the aeronautical and automotive industries and well as from important research programs at MIT with Steven A. Coons, at the University of Utah under Ivan Sutherland, and at Cornell University with Donald Greenberg. See Donald Greenburg's articles "Computers in architecture" in Scientific American (May 1974) and "The coming breakthrough of computers as a true design tool," in Architectural Record (September 1984); Alan Kay's first-hand recollection of the development of the Graphic User Interface in his video Doing with Images makes Symbols (1987).