This is a workshop about images of interiors. In the last 10 years computer visualisation has become commonplace, and yet it still seems as though it has to find its own voice. It is usually commissioned for quite specific purposes; to sell, to persuade, to impress. The medium operates within the environment of tight budgets, impending deadlines and is commissioned to order, it is not involved in the architecturally more engaged discussion that occurs between photographers and architects at the building’s completion.

Now, with less selling to be done, I’d like to explore the possibility of visualisation being used to express some of the core ideas of the architecture and to uncover or suggest some of the future qualities of the spaces. At present internal images are often relegated to a secondary supporting role in architectural presentations, one slowly collects one’s impression of a scheme through plans, sections and concept models. Strong internal images can highlight the experience of a building, a method of working that involves internal exploration can reduce “object-like” architectural design. Computers have been criticized for allowing architects to work like product designers, but there is another side to those new tools.

I would like to explore how best to create a truly rich image with layers of meaning and suggestion, using all the tools and mediums at our disposal to tell more about the fundamental ideas of a project. So expanding on Louis Kahn’s interest in the room as the starting point, this will mean concentrating on the creation of a single strong internal image of an unbuilt building. The Dutch parallel between internal space and psychological space will also be explored.

One common problem in this area is that while buried among the technical difficulties involved in crafting a working image, often one feels one loses sight of how the image will be seen. Guest critics will be invited to explain their work and contribute to the group’s discussion. We will also of course be burying ourselves in technicalities.