The word rendering has entered common language to define the creation of a virtual image, generated by mathematical information, to portray an object which does not yet exist in reality. The verb to render also has other meanings. It means to restore and to reinterpret, as Luciano Berio did in Rendering per Orchestra (1989) in which, starting from piano pieces written by Schubert for his unfinished 10th Symphony, he reconstructs the composition, connecting the pieces with modern fragments which transform the original material into a completely new language remaining nonetheless in some ways very faithful to the original.

With this approach, Rendering the City rebuilds the idea of a city through photographs by Giovanni Hänninen. Subjects of these images are both new spaces and their inhabitants, remodelled into distant realities which nonetheless remain in some way very faithful to the original projects. A relationship emerges between things architectural and human, created by amazement, silence and unfilled voids. The images become fragments of reality and, by interacting among themselves, they offer a common interpretation of lifestyle in a contemporary city.