T-S / L-A

Paris, June 2007.

Labtop Rendering is a multidisciplinary office that focuses on architecture as a system of signs. Labtop, directed by Thomas Sériès, gathers graduated architects, all dedicated to this specific issue in the making of architecture: visual translation, the promotion of the project through 3D artwork and video. In continuation of Auralab, Labtop produces architecture rendering. But we felt Auralab was overtaken at some point when we wanted to go further in the part we play during the process of the architectural project. Learning from our cooperation with so many architects, we've been driven to explore some new fields, and we more often participate in competitions and build our own designs.

The emotional edge v.s. the software  |  Convincing jury members involves more than just 3D models and rendering. What really is at stake is to convey information and emotion. We're not that much into the formal appearance of things. We consider the projects with an emotional edge, searching for the potential rather than the reality. You need to give the public the kind of visible signals that it needs to understand what is happening. While making an image we never lose sight of the project itself and the purpose of the image, which is essentially giving a clear explanation of the strongest architectural intentions. A beautiful image might not always be a clever one. We are constantly adjusting to get the image fine-tuned to be understood by jury members, or whatever the image is needed for. A clever image is a useful one. It's not that much a matter of the software and the hardware people use, a good image is really a sum of well-aimed shots.

The exciting thing about our practice is the huge amount of information that gets to us, the diversity of the projects' scales, of creative process, of positions and personalities we have to deal with. Among all, young and emerging architecture is our closest concern. We work on making it noticeable and explicit, since, for each of us individually at Labtop, the substance of the project, the research, the commitments and the fresh attempts, is what we are looking for.