This workshop is of particular interest to architectural designers, and participants from any background are welcome. No specific skills or previous experience are required, and participants do not need to bring any additional device with them.
What if architectural renders aren't just pictures of future buildings, but machines designed to hijack imagination?This workshop explores how hyper-realistic digital renderings and CGI shape our understanding of the future before it even exists. Rather than treating architectural renders as simple pictures of planned buildings, this research looks at them as complex, multi-layered objects that actively produce power, attract global capital, and build political consensus.
Born out of a distinct geographic landscape, such as the massive building boom across the Gulf and the broader Arab region, these images come in different technical flavors.
While CGI relies on parametric modeling to project engineered authority, other 3D renders leverage gaming engines to simulate immersive real estate, and AI-generated imagery operates through probabilistic synthesis. Yet, all three converge to produce a frictionless visual culture of anticipation that moves billions of dollars.
This session introduces the image stratigraphy, a visual archaeology method that treats the speculative render not as a flat surface, but as a sealed excavation to uncover what lies underneath: financial interests, free trading, nation-building, and experimental geopolitical strategies.
By dissecting how these images create a sense of inevitable progress, and by physically extrude the compressed layers of speculative imagery (from CAD/CGI technopolitics to the erasure of physical and territorial ground) participants will acquire practical tools to rub against visual neo-propaganda, interrogate pre-emptive trust, and point out the subtle but rapid protocols of power hidden within contemporary visual culture.
After an discursive presentation by Noura Tafeche, the workshop will be structured on the following sections: 1) Real, rendered or AI?; 2) What do you trust?; 3) Image stratrigraphy; 4) Open debate and closing.
-- Max 30 participants --
