“Where are the humans?”
As a student of architecture, I was often asked by my professors and jurors upon seeing my drawings- “Where are the humans?” referring to a lack of human figures in the representative drawings and models, for they are essential references for scale. The human scale is the proportion of space in relation to the human dimension. People in the renderings/views tell the story of the design and draw the viewer to have an inclusive and immersive experience.
Architecture has multiple forms of representation- drawings, 3d renders, models, photographs, words, videos, sketches, etc. The last couple of years saw media booming and virtually running the world. Social media platforms became the places to be seen, show your work and sell your services. This has seeped into the architectural practice, where architects and firms appoint PR and marketing strategists to make them ‘visible’ on the internet.
Social media, being a platform for pictures, resulted in architectural and interior photography becoming important mediums for representations for small and large practices alike. A question I found myself asking after skimming through hundreds of project photographed documentation of built projects- interior and architecture- is “Where are the humans?”
Furthermore, architectural scenes are always portrayed with perfect weather and blue skies, in the golden hour with the perfect amount of sunlight hitting and no trace of any life or usage. These are the unsaid rules of architectural image-making these days that most architects, photographers, publishers, and journalists seem to comply with.
Architecture or any space, for that matter, is more often than not designed for human interaction and habitation with that space. Ignoring the very subject the object was designed for is very ironic and sterilises the purpose of the design. The question is- why have humans not made it to the idea of a perfect picture?
Other than removing human, in an attempt to make the designs look clean, beautiful, and clutter free, the authors of the photograph leave out the lived-in aspect of a space. Architecture and interior spaces are represented as a perfect uncluttered space, so pristine that it is forbidden to touch like a painting in a museum. It is rather disturbing to think that the removal of architecture from everyday life and human interaction is what sells architecture.
In his book ‘Architecture Depends’ (2009), Jeremy Till maintains that architecture tries to see itself as autonomous, an abstract world of order beauty and perfection. Usage, human needs, everyday life, time, and mess all seem like a horrible threat to the white-washed aesthetics of Le Corbusier and his apostles. He further argues that the notion of lived-in spaces threatens the designers feeling of being in control.
Designers are control freak- detail-oriented individuals. But, as much as we, the designers, might want it to be, can architecture ever be autonomous? Does the detachment of a space from its user to represent ‘perfection and purity’ reduce architecture as a sculpture and deny it of its social nature?
These questions interrogate the agency of the designers, who choreograph the designs for the people yet efficiently remove any kind of human character from these spaces and the authorship of the photographer who is created these clinical images.
There is no denying that the focus of the photographs has to be the design, details, and architecture. However, the interaction between people and buildings is a characteristic of the artistic side of architectural photography. The photos could creatively negotiate the built environment with human interaction so that the building alone is no longer the centre of attention, and the images illustrate relationships between people and objects rather than just the objects themselves.
There are a few photographers who do not fail to include people from the places. Julius Shulman, an architectural photographer of the modernist times, with his photograph of Case Study House #22, ensured that architecture reflects a lifestyle. He captured the spaces as they were to be experienced.
A photographer of the recent time is Iwan Baan, who deliberately included everyday situations in his stunningly aesthetic photography.
Humans make all the difference. The notion of trying to sell a space designed for people without any people is like a washing powder advertisement that doesn’t show any stained clothes. Such calculative omissions reduce the image to imagery, taking it farther away from reality.
The very idea of designing for people is the core to the profession, be it a small room or a city, and that shouldn't be lost in these representative translations.
