Blurred people in architectural drawings: Welcome to the Postnormal

Joep Jacobs

In a world of real and imagined pressures to move fast, architects are rendering people as ballistic objects, hurling through designed spaces:

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Architects have begun blurring human figures in drawings of new-office projects, to appeal to clients who aspire to active, high-energy workplaces, says Jorge Barrero, a technical designer in Chicago for Gensler, an architecture, planning and design firm. The image is one clients “can connect with on an emotional level,” Mr. Barrero says.

Tom Krizmanic, a principal with Studios Architecture in New York, says about a quarter of the 218 designs he helped judge in a recent office-design competition, co-sponsored by Business Interiors by Staples, showed humans as blurred figures in motion. The trend began about three years ago, he says.

This may be the enterprise elite’s equivalent of the new aesthetics. Instead of glitch art and drones, though, it’s executives sprinting through foyers or hallways, striding purposefully across streets, just on the verge of reaching escape velocity.