On his eponymously named blog, Lebbeus Woods recently commented on the photographs accompanying an invitation he received for the opening of the Guangzhou Opera House designed by Zaha Hadid On seeing no traces of human presence in the photographs, Woods wondered if they were photographs of the "authentic building" or merely very "skillful computer renderings." And on being reassured that they were indeed photographs of the building as built, he wondered why anyone would want to build buildings that look like computer renderings. Although Woods went on to discuss Hadid's quest for purity of form and its implied utopian hubris, his critique also brings the perception of the rendering to the forefront. In their apparent perfection and absence of specificity, the photographs of the Opera House look like computer renderings. Whereas photographs are understood as transparent presentations of reality, the computer rendering is understood more as a depiction of a subjective version of reality that can be framed to make specific readings imperative-in this case a notion of formal purity.

 

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