Architectural renderings have always been an important part of the design process. At face value, they are an efficient tool to convey a design long before a project becomes reality. They facilitate communication and allow for an easy understanding of a project during its earliest phases. They answer questions about the physical properties of a place. Is it big or is it small? Is it brick or is it stone? Is that window here or there?

In-line shopping centers have entered a new, third generation of design that reinvents their modern roots while creating humane architecture. The first generation of in-line shopping centers was the strip mall. Based on late 1960s modernist ideas of flexibility, it sought the ability to put tenants in any location. It had a pure, raw functionalism that made it a successful retail prototype. The second generation began in the 1990s with a post-modernization of the strip mall.