Objectspace’s architectural inspired exhibition on now!

08 Jul 2025

Rendered Futures: Drawing architecture, the newest exhibition at Objectspace Auckland, charts five decades of architectural drawing, capturing the final years of architecture as an exclusively hand-drawn discipline to today’s digital culture dominated by the aesthetics of the stylised render.

Bringing together drawings from more than fifty local architects, Rendered Futures spans recent graduates and practising architects across multiple generations; technical drawings, sketches and works of art all jockey for position, all amongst beautifully painted exhibition walls in Resene Secrets, Resene Surrender and Resene Smoky Green.

A breadth of mark-making is expressed, from creative exploration to the formative stages of the design and construction process, mapping the enduring modes of drawing that architects return to.

Installations at Rendered Futures: Drawing architecture exhibition at Objectspace featuring (left to right) Resene Secrets, Resene Surrender and Resene Smoky Green. Image by Sam Hartnett.

The diversity of work in Rendered Futures articulates architectural drawing as a shape-shifting and sometimes radical form. Not just a means of technical instruction and representation of the built realm, drawing can also be a site for advocacy, experimentation and cultural production, much of which isn’t visible beyond the discipline itself.

Installation view, Rendered Futures: Drawing architecture, 28 Jun–24 Aug 2025 at Objectspace. Painted in Resene Secrets, Resene Surrender and Resene Smoky Green. Image by Sam Hartnett.

Taking a broad view across its timespan – a period of vast technological disruption to the tools of image-making – the exhibition considers how drawing is changing. The drawing process is increasingly codified through computer-aided design, standardising representations of architecture and impacting the way it is taught and communicated. Rendered Futures asks what this change could mean for drawing’s influence on the discipline; for its creative and critical potential in the futures to come.

This exhibition is on now until 24 August 2025 at Objectspace, Ockham Gallery and Cemac Foyer, Auckland

For more information visit Objectspace. 

Published: 08 Jul 2025