Dressing up block models for urban design presentations

Generating perspectives for urban designers is a different animal altogether in the way the most important views for a presentation are approached. Very often the most indicative perspectives will be printed on huge posters so a lot of detail has to be in the views for them to be a success. The problem is that the architecture in these presentations takes a back seat, so the models or layout provided to me to work up tends to look like this:

You could call this my blank canvas.

The best way for me to approach this is to dress my model up as a “where is Wally?” kind of exercise. This means that the closer the viewer gets to the printed poster, or zooms into a perspective, the more detail gets visible. Most people love this.

So the question is: Do we need to show all this detail? It means nothing, right? The fact is that when we are going through all the trouble with these big presentations, we are trying to grab the audience. They have to remember this presentation. Often the scheme has to compete against a whole lot of others. If we can get the attention of the delegate or investor, they are likely to remember this scheme better. Is this a marketing trick? Maybe, but it works.