Designing People

The figures that inhabit architectural and landscape renderings are not the actual focus of the drawings. Homeowners, children, pets, shoppers, and condo-dwellers are included to convey the scale and functionality of a proposed design. They humanize and create an emotional appeal in what might otherwise appear to be sterile environments and allow the client to imagine how a space will be used. From the watercolor Victorian to the scalie hipster, this exhibit features more than a century of designers’ representations of people from the Environmental Design Archives.