I have worked with many designers over two decades. The best designers imagine being there.
What they would see.
What they would hear.
What they would feel.
That makes sense, because to feel good in a place makes you want to be there, stay there, live, play or work there. So, if experience is the thing, why do most visualisations show stuff?
Paving.
Walls.
Steps.
Handrails.
The stuff of landscape architecture.
Okay, many CGIs do include people, but just as placeholders. Vacuous figures drifting through a stage set. They aren’t doing anything. They aren’t engaging or reacting. No one is having a conversation – with anyone else, or anything at all. They don’t tell us how the place works or what people will really do, or the spectrum of experience the place will support.
When it comes time to show the design, its tempting and common to want to show the stuff of design. It is easy to forget what the design is for. Experience.
The below scene below shows the typical approach. This “before” image shows a lot of skatepark. People are evenly sprinkled around, rigid and detached. Sure, it shows what is there, not accurately what people might actually do or feel there.
So, if the above image isn’t cutting it, what would we do to make it work. Have a look at the markup below. The comments explain to communicate the environmental performance.
Trees create comfort. How?
Through shade and sense of enclosure.
Sure, you won’t see all the things behind the trees (or behind ANY object). Its amazing how terrified of trees are architects and visualisers. If you want to show how the space will feel, show the trees, even if you show less of the other stuff.
Remember, you are not showing trees.
You are communicating shade and enclosure.
The second thing is to show people doing the things. We’d not be random placeholders filling space. We would gather. We would sit in the shade, watch others, be resting, lingering. We’d skate (of course)!
Sure, this image is still in progress. But it’s starting to tell the real story — not of stuff in space, but of people and experience.
Experience, the true stuff of design.
