“Rendering” a Verdict on the Arch Grounds Designs

It's been fun to read what each of the five finalist Arch competition design teams envision for the future of the St. Louis riverfront. Better yet, though less informative, has been oohing and aahing at the incredible images of a future city offered by the teams. We will likely not see everything proposed by the winning team built, but are the renderings even plausible at all?

As KMOX's Michael Calhoun astutely reiterated via Twitter from the design team jury interviews this past week, "The Mississippi River is NOT blue!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!" But it does look great in blue! The muddy brown likely doesn't make the proposed riverside seating, concerts and pedestrian bridges look quite as nice. This article is a not-so-serious effort, but the issue of accurate architectural renderings is a serious one. We've all become used to some extra flourish, lots of lights, maybe fireworks, lots of happy skinny people...but there's surely a line somewhere. Is a team that promotes an amphitheater obligated to show how it would appear 350 days of the year - sparsely populated, maybe not newly mown? Or should a space be shown used to its potential?