RENDERING, ARCHITECTURAL. Architectural ren dering is a pictorial art whose object is to visualize architectural conceptions. When an architect is employed to design a building, it is desirable that he provide his client, in advance, with an accu rate impression of the appearance of the proposed structure. Since words cannot adequately convey the architectural story, paintings or drawings are employed to render it, as it were, clear to the eye; they serve as a kind of communication. This is the most familiar application of the art; and, when so used, rendering may be de fined as the medium whereby the renderer communicates a sense of the reality of a structure in advance of its concrete materiali zation. Occasionally, however, the architect has a rendering made in the course of his own work and as an aid to his own study.
When an architectural conception first forms in the background of his mind, it has, of necessity, a certain nebulous character. But with the effort of expressing it on paper, in actual lines and tone values, it emerges, so to speak, and crystallizes. When so em ployed, rendering serves as a definite step in the evolution of architectural conceptions.
Rendering has a third use; viz., in connection with already existing buildings. When so used, renderings—as distinguished from the miscellaneous paintings and drawings that refer only incidentally to architecture—have, as their chief or sole concern, to render clear the strictly architectural nature of the subject. By this selection of architectural factors, they may enable the lay man to grasp the significance of a building more readily than when faced by its multitudinous and irrelevant details. At the same time, they may serve as a faithful record of the historic course of architectural design. In these three ways, rendering fulfills a recognized function, and has done so over a long period.
In the last quarter of a century, there has developed an aspect of architectural and engineering practice that involves rendering on a more extended scale—town and city planning (q.v.). A com prehensive plan for the future building development of any large community is never the conception of a single mind; many minds must collaborate in it. Nor is it materialized in a few years, but in many years. In these circumstances, it becomes impractical for its whole purport to be carried only in any single given mind, or for an accurate image to be postponed until the whole long scheme has been consummated. The various contributory ideas and sug gestions must be assembled, in definitive terms, on the paper or canvas of the rendering, in order that the prophecy may assume sufficient reality to serve as a criterion and a guide.
Another factor, which more clearly reveals the contemporary field of rendering, is that Western architecture, as a whole, is passing through a period of transition and, therefore, of experi ment (see ARCHITECTURE). It is true that the practice of many of the most prominent architects is to continue constructing mere copies, or very slightly modified copies, of those classic styles which, in their impressionable years, they were led to regard as being the very body of architectural culture ; their effort is to emulate the classic designers in all respects, save, perhaps, the latter's logic, sense of congruity and ability to fashion novel forms.
Their public, accordingly, has been wont to feel the presence of architecture only in a building to which the architect has added a Greek colonnade, a Roman dome or a Gothic spire. In all this, professional rendering has been able to play but a small part, since the picture has been regarded as an end in itself simply to be made as attractive as possible ; it could scarcely be employed as a means of rendering forth a new truth, more especially as the ap pearance of these styles of architecture has been known for centuries.
In recent years, however, definite changes have occurred in methods of construction and the manufacture of materials, as well as in the general social and economic situation ; and one notices that in the larger centres of Western civilization a distinct type of designer is making his presence in the architectural profession more and more strongly felt. These designers are inspired not so much by the traits of an architectural heredity as by the needs of contemporary environment. For them, the tremendous environ mental changes that have occurred imply and demand a corre sponding change in the architectural approach. They do not—to choose one example—employ a new material, steel, to support façades, which have developed in other materials and can be logical only therein. They are engaged, briefly, in developing new types of architecture. Certain limitations lie upon these practising and experimental architects. It is sometimes too hazardous to test a novel conception by actually carrying it out in a building which, whether a success or a failure, must stand for many years. But the conception may be quite thoroughly tested in a series of conscientious renderings. For example, the modern American zoning laws involved a radical departure in the general forms of buildings, and into the strange spaces created by these laws some architects proceeded without pause to force the classical images with which their minds were filled. More cautious architects sought to discover the basic structural types that the laws ad mitted ; for this purpose, renderings were employed. Another limitation is that the projects of architects are practically bound by the ideas and the financial resources of their clients ; they can not actually build in advance of their clients' prepossessions. In renderings, however, they may freely express their real intentions, and these renderings, when duly exhibited can, and in fact do, make a distinct contribution to the progress of architectural de sign. A third limitation is that no practising architect, however fortunate, has time to build more than a very few influential buildings during his lifetime. He may, however, record himself in soundly fashioned drawings and paintings whose content, though at first existing in only two dimensions, may, in due time, be realized in three.