In 2020, artist and designer Charlotte Taylor and architect Riccardo Fornoni unveiled Villa Saraceni. The sculptural, seemingly floating seaside house, nestled within the stark white cliffs of Scala dei Turchi in southern Sicily, “went semi-viral,” says Taylor. Soon they were inundated with news in regards to the project. “We had numerous requests for photo shoots,” Taylor remembers. “People asked us if they may rent the villa,” Fornoni adds. Meanwhile, others got here forward to complain in regards to the location: a Unesco World Heritage Site. And then there have been the messages from “people saying they’d visited the villa… And she wasn't there.”
It's not there. “The villa doesn’t exist in real life; “We had a dream and visualized it digitally,” says Fornoni, who lives within the northern Italian city of Mantua. Villa Saraceni exists within the Metaverse only as a CGI (Computer Generated Imagery) rendering. Digital technology, long used as a way to appreciate real-world architectural and interior design plans, has recently taken on a lifetime of its own. In the hands of a brand new generation of creatives, these are tools for exploring escapist fantasy. Shiny glass boxes float above the water; Caves are carved into caves worthy of binding, and space orbs glide around distant galaxies. They are images that seduce and fascinate, starting from strikingly surreal to disturbingly photorealistic.
Rendering was first used experimentally within the Nineteen Seventies and Nineteen Eighties, when early iterations of 3D software were used to visualise architectural projects akin to Zaha Hadid's “The Peak” – a high-rise in Hong Kong that (perhaps fittingly) was never actually built. “Renderings have at all times had this stylized feel – either very dystopian or very clean architectural visualizations,” suggests Taylor. “Many people create completely idealized spaces with no trace of human life, but I like them to be a bit chaotic, have a little bit of personality – and there’s a Sudoku on the table.”
Taylor, a former illustrator, got here to this manner of working “by accident”. While creating architectural illustrations within the trompe l'oeil style, she discovered rendering software. “I used to be fascinated by how you may make ideas look so realistic,” she says. “And it was just getting rolling…” Spurred by the isolation of the 2020 lockdown, she founded the design studio Maison de Sable (House of Sand) and commenced bringing her hand-drawn ideas to life in collaboration with a variety of digital artists. They quickly evolve from imagining individual scenes to entire houses. “It became a little bit of an obsession; It allowed me this freedom to play and experiment.”
The results include The Residency, a minimalist concrete dream in Joshua Tree National Park, realized along with Madrid-based Alba de la Fuente. The all-avocado green Villa Ortizet, with its 70s-style round sunken sofa surrounded by the green French countryside of Lozère, is a collaboration with the Marseille-based company ZYVA Studioa self-titled “ridiculous architecture studio founded by Anthony Authhié.” On the banks of the Atibaia River in São Paulo sits Casa Atibaia, a lush and curvaceous glass-walled structure resting on boulders. Inspired by the Brazilian modernism of Lina Bo Bardi, it was designed along with a French architect Nicholas Preaud.
“All the projects Charlotte and I actually have worked on are fictional and dreamy,” says Préaud. “But they’re at all times designed and thought through in such a way that the project can actually be realized.” For Préaud, each digital area that has been worked on for months functions primarily as “research that’s then applied to real commissioned projects.”
De la Fuente, an architect who has worked with the Barcelona studio of Ricardo BofillShe says she creates “architecture through images.” As a recent graduate, she explains: “It was a really powerful tool to indicate people what I could do.” For me, it doesn't matter if it's real or not; It's the concept behind it that's interesting. I believe this will likely be the longer term of architecture.”
Brands are also increasingly open to staging their products virtually. According to Fornoni, a vital driving force is the digital stage designs that he has created for textile brands Kirkby Designis sustainability. “Transporting sofas from one place to a different doesn’t produce CO2,” he says.
But the impetus to design virtual spaces might be more poetic. When Taylor designed her first furniture collection, which was shown in real life on the Lisbon gallery Garcé & Dimofski In 2022, she also created a virtual architectural home called Casa de Formas to showcase her Two Tone Daybed alongside pieces from other designers. “Our goal was to create something truly unique, free from constraints,” says co-founder Olivier Garcé. “As a gallery that works with the perfect craftsmen, we desired to bring this expertise into our dream setting.”
Online platforms like DecoHub are driving the digital-first agenda. In 2022, Paris Design Marketplace Unique world began presenting collections in a purely virtual space. “But when the pieces are commissioned, they are literally made,” says architect and designer Benni Allan, whose oak and steel Slab coffee table is an element of the Monde Singulier universe. “Making my furniture requires numerous energy and energy – it is rather expensive. Why not only test it in virtual space?”
The surreal splendor of virtual worlds might be quite charming. “The idea of dreaming is basically essential,” says Jenn Ellis, who co-founded the virtual gallery Aora with Allan to bring together art, architecture and music. “Virtual will not be a compromise; It’s a spot where you are feeling excited.”
“It’s an escapism,” says Taylor, whose Instagram accounts (@charlottetaylr And @maison_de_sablewhere she shares each her own work and that of others) has a combined total of around 581,000 followers. She also printed the virtual world within the book (Chronicle Books). “I used to be an obsessed child. I still have it on my computer. I don’t know why, but the thought of fictional people in fictional houses has at all times fascinated me.”
While some digital images are assumed to be real, one other problem has recently escalated. “People often think that 3D images are AI,” says Taylor. “I also share some AI explorations (on my Instagram account), so I’m not helping the confusion.”
The RIBA (Royal Institute of British Architects) AI Report 2024 – the primary of its kind – found that 41 percent of architectural practices have adopted artificial intelligence to some extent. “The way of bringing ideas from my imagination to such a sensible state has modified dramatically,” says architect Carlos Bañón Blazquez, director of the Architectural Intelligence Research Lab on the Singapore University of Technology and Design. Using his own visual “prompts” – including sketches and 3D models – he uses AI to “represent some values of what architecture might be.” Whether dramatically angular and colourful concrete structures or expansive glass facades in rock formations: “I attempt to provoke a response,” he adds.
For Johan Hybschmann, who teaches on the Bartlett School of Architecture at University College London, AI “is usually a great tool for generating options – say, give me six floor plans for a high-rise constructing – which you’ll be able to then change and control .”, he states. “What we're somewhat afraid of is that single beautiful image that's not necessarily a thoughtful piece of architecture.”
For Taylor, fantasy is becoming an increasing number of reality. Pieces that began virtually have turn into physical furniture, including her chunky pine Sturdy chairs for Garcé & Dimofski. In London, she designed the interiors of the newly opened audio bar Space Talk in collaboration with Allan. Homes from Puglia to Utah are also underway.
In fact, architects Fornoni, Préaud and de la Fuente agree that their ultimate goal is to rework their visions into reality. Fornoni is currently working on an interior design project in Lanzarote. It's inspired by a previous digital project, but “with the ability to actually do it is sort of a dream come true. When it's built, it's something completely different.”
