Rendering The City

The word rendering has entered common language to define the creation of a virtual image, generated by mathematical information, to portray an object which does not yet exist in reality.
The use of renderings in architecture has become a common practice and it aims to give the most realistic representation possible of a project to put to the use of investors and clients.
The use of colour and shades is so precise that we often have the impression of being deeply familiar with the nature of a project even before the first stone has been laid.
Human presence is indicated in renderings in order to underline its importance within the project. However, once the mathematical information becomes real cement and glass, people who actually live in the environments do not always manage to be in tune with the spaces which seem to be trapped in a virtual dimension.

With this approach, Rendering the City rebuilds the idea of a city through photographs by Giovanni Hänninen. Subjects of these images are both new spaces and their inhabitants, remodelled into distant realities which nonetheless remain in some way very faithful to the original projects. A relationship emerges between things architectural and human, created by amazement, silence and unfilled voids. The images become fragments of reality and, by interacting among themselves, they offer a common interpretation of lifestyle in a contemporary city.