One of the biggest challenges for designers and architects is to imagine what the final design will look like when it is still just a rough idea on paper or in AutoCAD. Designers must try to visualise entire buildings to understand how they will integrate with the surrounding landscape, whether they will be in harmony with green spaces or simply to understand what the new city skyline will look like.
3D modelling techniques have reached very high levels of realism, making it possible to create hyper-realistic renderings that look like completed projects and lived-in homes, as well as almost surreal architecture, such as the church on the prairie that won the Render of the Year 2021 competition, designed by Tom Burkewitz.

The competition awarded prizes to the best renderings produced in the past year, which were judged by a jury of ten architects, including the winner of the competition in 2020. In addition to the winning project, the competition awarded other honourable mentions, prizes for interior design projects, for environmental architecture and also for younger designers.
Even the images of giant walls wedged between mountain ranges seem to have something realistic about them, as do the bridges spanning the rivers of imaginary cities. The competition tells of worlds that might exist for real or only in the creative imagination of some designers, cities and buildings that are even impossible to enter and others we didn’t know we wanted to live in.