Before the project, there is the dream of the project. This dream passes through the transmission of an emotion. Is it wrong to want to share it? What should we think of an image that would be too beautiful? That the project is necessarily bad? Do we judge the project or the image? Does the architectural image have an artistic character, beyond the project represented, which would be sufficient to justify the choice of a project? What are the alternative objective criteria to get a better idea than a perspective view, when choosing? Are graphic designers responsible for ostracizing programmatic criteria during jury deliberation? Should they censor themselves for this by distorting their work? Is the part of dream contained in an image so harmful that a dry and abstract vision should be imposed? Is quality better carried by abstraction? Isn't architecture at the very heart of life, light and space? Do architectural images not precisely try to show this part of the project that the line alone cannot render? What would be the alternative? The “raw” 3D model? The analog model? Rendering unambienced geometrics at rotring? Back to the eighties!
But this return is impossible, for the simple reason that the computer is at the origin of a new way of designing. The flagship buildings of the 2000s, those that will sign the style of our time, could not have seen the light of day without CAD. Digital communication imagery is just a popularization of this technology. Architecture is first and foremost a craft of image. Architects have always had to train energy before building. Model, plans or 3D image, the representation of the project goes through the eye. How to blame those who want to give an extra dimension to their work? Poetry distinguishes and ennobles the act of building. It must also precede it.

How could we justify, in the age of all-digital and cinema on a green screen, depriving ourselves of this means of convincing, and sometimes, of inspiring? A good project, served by a good image, always finds its way better. One could rather wonder if the eye of the decision-makers has not, little by little, been educated by dint of use, and, sometimes, error. Public taste has evolved as well. No municipality can do without a beautiful image to communicate about its projects. Specialized sites and social networks are engaged in a relentless hunt to find the thumbnail that will illustrate the project-issue of the debate. The image has become a kind of "proof", it does not disappear from the web. It becomes a totem for some, crystallizing the expectation... and serving as a lightning rod in case of delay.
It is in this context that Golem traces its path. Resulting from an evolution of Depaule & Associés in 2008, the experience of the company actually dates back to 1995, at the dawn of the first digital images of architecture. Since then, the “style” of the agency has remained unchanged. It is made of a very Platonic submission to the natural rules of light and space, but controlled by the pleasure of the eye. We perceive the chaos and noise around us, but we don't want to echo it in our work. We want to avoid the superfluous, the kitsch, the artifice used as a facility. We take advantage of technological developments, we try experiments outside our core business, but we keep this faith in the search for emotion: architecture is a message to convey, which we refuse to submit to the "machine" . This is why our production retains this graphic, sometimes pictorial character. It is the pursuit of this sense of reality, both honest and epicurean, that drives us forward in our work.