The parameters of realness in architectural images were up for discussion by the Eye Line drawing competition judges this year – but the quality of entrants won out
Given the ongoing debate around social media image manipulation and ‘fake news’, there were some interesting discussions around this year’s Eye Line judging table which, despite the subject being the act of drawing, touched on related issues.
What criteria govern the veracity of an architectural image? If the narrative of a drawing is based on a fiction, does that actually matter? One entrant quoted Le Corbusier, an architect not famed for his objectivity: “I prefer drawing to talking. Drawing is faster and leaves less room for lies.” It boils down to the old question posed by, among others, Plato, Pilate and Orwell: ‘Truth? What is that?
This year saw fewer student entries, with practitioner submission numbers coming into closer alignment than is usual. Perhaps it was because the latter are feeling more comfortable using AI that we saw more of such entries from them.
But as a self-confessed AI Luddite, judge Mary Duggan posed interesting questions, asking about the nature of “a prompt” and what this said for authorship of work. What could we take, say, from three very adept, stylistically different AI images, duly prompted, from the same person?
Duggan was unswayed by any beauty: “I don’t read this as a set, if that’s what they are,” she said bluntly. “If there was evidence of consistent style I’d feel happier; as it is, I don’t get any sense of conscious authorship – it feels like AI without commitment.”
Then there were entries playing on reality. Beirut Arab University’s Sara Taleb’s Poetic Ruins, a ‘real’ image of a bombed-out city (in Gaza? She doesn’t say) turned out to be artifice, with more investigation revealing doctoring and manipulation – but soberly challenging our readiness, perhaps, to revert to visual assumptions we have become inured to via social and mass media.
In the end, both category winners asked us in some way to suspend our disbelief. One, a Lidar scan of a real place – but superimposed and layered to create a conscious and particular rereading of a literary-loaded physical context.
The other, a powerful, political, image-based human story we wanted to believe but ultimately weren’t sure if we could; a literal tapestry that left judges swept along in the wake of its narrative.
Fake news? Who knows? But further evidence, if any were needed, of the enduring power of images to beguile.
2025 JUDGES
Mary Duggan director, Mary Duggan Architects
Samantha Hardingham independent writer, designer and educator
Luis Miguel (Koldo) Lus Arana winner Eye Line 2024, associate professor, University of Zaragoza School of Engineering & Architecture
Bongani Muchemwa director, McCloy + Muchemwa Architects
Jan-Carlos Kucharek (chair) deputy editor, RIBAJ