Episode Details

This week we unpack the NOMA/NOMAS Barbara G. Laurie Student Design Competition to debates about realism, anti-renders, architectural photography, and why certain images of cities feel more truthful than polished architectural visuals. The MXD crew unpacks student competition work, community-centered design, architectural representation, and the tension between formal design discourse and real-world stakeholders.

The second half of the episode dives into the rise of the “anti-render”, architectural realism, landscape, labor conditions in architecture, and photography that documents decay, melancholy, and urban change. Along the way, the group debates staged versus documentary images, “despair core,” ruin aesthetics, and why raw, imperfect imagery may feel more honest than idealized architectural visualization.

Cold Crit Project Credits:

2025 Barbara G. Laurie NOMAS Competition Submissions:UCLA NOMAS ChapterUC Santa Barbara NOMAS Chapter

Chapters:

0:00 Intro – Reality, Fantasy, and Architectural Images

0:39 Welcome Back + Friday Recording Chaos

1:21 NOMA / NOMAS Barbara G. Laurie Competition

4:26 UCLA’s Winning Project and Group Design Process

9:04 Reading the Competition Projects Formally

15:55 Community, Culture, and What Competitions Reward

19:24 Architecture, Program, and Real Stakeholders

23:55 Anti-Render Poll – Why People Prefer Realism

27:42 Client Expectations, Landscape, and Representation

32:39 Photography, Decay, and Documenting the Real

35:54 Realism vs Staging in Urban Photography

42:00 Ruin Porn, Despair Core, and Aestheticizing Harm

49:08 Why Raw Images Feel More Honest

50:34 Fun Topic – Internet Objects, Volume Sliders, and Excel Modeling

53:01 Closing Thoughts

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