Whether for client meetings or the silver screen, architectural renderings that sell fantasy need to be grounded in ambitions for improving the world, rather than sugar-coated versions of reality, says Aaron Betsky.

The last embers of a campfire glow by the shore of a river, meandering towards us from a waterfall overshadowed by mountain peaks rising into the clouds. A dog, its tongue hanging from its mouth, guards a canoe that has been pulled onto the shore against the ducks paddling around the river. It is fall; some of the trees ? including, strangely, several of the firs ? have turned red.
And there, in the centre of this sylvan scene, is the Glass House, turned towards us in three-quarter view, its interior glowing with its own fire, as well as with hidden electric lights. A figure, which we assume is the magician of both modernism and postmodernism, Philip Johnson himself, lurks in the background. The mash-ups of modernist architecture, like Le Corbusier's Villa Savoye, and paintings by Thomas Kinkade are created by Twitter user @robyniko
The river of history has rarely run by such a strange scene, at least not along its architecture tributary. The image is one of four released by anonymous Twitter user @robyniko. They are based on the work of the late painter Thomas Kinkade, who trademarked the moniker "Painter of light", and who turned his formula for evoking pastoral splendour into an industry that at one point included galleries all over the United Stat...