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The Conceptual Rendering – What It Is and Is Not

One of the most exciting and challenging moments in any architectural glass design process is creating a conceptual rendering for the client.

It’s exciting, of course, because the whole collaborative team begins to envision what the project will look like. The possibilities start to feel more tangible and real. The challenges lie, however, in wide misconceptions about what a rendering is and is not, and different understandings of how the creative process works.

So. What is a rendering?

In the realm of architectural art glass design, a rendering is, at best, a two dimensional representation of the physical experience of a work which does not yet exist. In other words, it’s a way of thinking on paper. Even as the work is fabricated, it will continue to evolve.

What does that mean?

When I am developing a project — typically in conversation with the architect, owner, developers, and any number of additional stakeholders — my first concern is how the work relates to the space in broad-brush terms. This usually begins as a feeling or sensibility related to the client’s mission or focus, as well as the architectural intent of the space. It may involve identifying possible glass working techniques or color palettes, zeroing in on elements of scale and lighting. These preliminary considerations, it must be said, are also driven by budget and technical limitations for installation.

As I share my ideas with clients, I try to make it as easy as possible for them to understand what I’m proposing. If the architect has provided a perspective rendering of the space, as is often the case, I work with a design associate to “cut and paste” my concept into this rendering. Samples from previous projects can help convey the nature of the material. As the design process proceeds, the renderings become tighter and more expressive.

Yet, it is critical we all understand that a rendering can communicate only so much. For one thing, many aspects of projects continue to be developed throughout the fabrication process; and certain dynamics cannot be known until the materials start interacting with the space during installation.

More importantly, though, a finished piece will never look exactly like the rendering because one’s experience of a work changes dramatically when encountering that work at full scale and in the context of its surrounding environment. This point may seem painfully obvious — a two dimensional image on paper, or more likely viewed on a computer monitor, is different from the final full scale installation — but the significance of this difference can’t be emphasized enough. As Jeff Koons observes in an interview with the Whitney, when one experiences a work in person, all of the senses are affected. A conceptual rendering can never fully anticipate a project’s interaction with light, the temperature or tactile qualities of the material, the way one’s perspective changes when moving through the space. When you look at a rendering, you take in the whole thing at once; you don’t get the overwhelming effect of scale that invites your eyes to move around, shifting from one focal point to the next — experiences which completely change the meaning and emotional impact of a piece.

Finally, the mediums used to create the rendering can only approximate the materials that will comprise the actual piece. For example, my rendering for the Spaulding project, shown above, began as a watercolor which was scanned into the computer and subsequently “cut apart and reassembled” digitally (more on that process here). The resulting composition was then Photoshopped into the architect’s rendering. At first glance, the rendering looks quite a bit like the photo of the final piece. But consider the differences between watercolor on paper and glass in a room with natural light. Glass has a dazzling tactile quality that simply can’t be fully conveyed in the form of a rendering. And, for example, does the white of the paper represent white glass, or clear glass — or an opalescent mouth-blown glass backed up with mirror (which, in fact, it is). It’s also worth noting that, in this blog post, I am comparing a rendering to a photograph, which itself is several times removed from the actual work.

So, in the end, it is a leap of faith. The design of an art glass installation always involves dialogue, but at a certain point, one has to trust the expertise and experience of the artist. This trust is bolstered, of course, by looking at the artist’s past work. A conceptual rendering will capture the spirit and direction of a project, but the creative process will continue as the work is developed, fabricated, and installed.