About

Renderings are marketing. That is not a scandal and this site does not treat it as one. A rendering is made early, to raise money or win an approval, and the building that follows goes through years of engineering, budgeting, and permitting. Things move. The interesting part is what moved and why.

What we do and do not say

We show the rendering source, show the current site through live visual evidence, and list what is different. We do not characterise anyone's intent. If a project changed and someone said why on the record, we quote that and cite it. If nobody said why, the page says exactly that and stops there.

You will find entries here where the built result matched the rendering, and one where it came in bigger. Those are not filler. A site that only collects letdowns is a complaint, not a record.

Why buildings change

Almost always one of these, and almost always boring:

Value engineering. The design gets priced, the price is too high, and material and detail get simplified until it fits.
Financing. A lender, a tax credit, or an anchor tenant does not show up, and the project shrinks or stops.
Code and setbacks. Zoning, fire access, parking minimums, and floodplain rules push massing around.
Soil and structure. What is under the site decides what can sit on it, and that is often found out after the rendering.
Material costs. Steel, glass, and labor prices move between the drawing and the bid.
Tenants. The retail bay in the rendering needs a tenant willing to sign for it.
Phasing. Big projects are drawn whole and built in pieces. A phase that never gets funded is not a broken plan, it is an unfinished one.

Why we link to renderings instead of showing them

Renderings are copyrighted. They belong to the architect, the rendering studio, or the developer who commissioned them. Reproducing someone's image because it is convenient for our layout is not something we are willing to do.

So every entry links out to where the rendering was actually published, with the credit attached. The experience is weaker. The posture is right. Where we can, we cite public-record sources: planning commission dockets, zoning filings, and the architect's own project page.

If you made one of these renderings and you would rather we did not even link to it, say so and the link comes down. See the takedown policy. If you would be happy for us to show it with credit, we would like that a lot, so tell us that too.

The two halves, and where they come from

Every entry has a completed reality side now. The generator selects one of three evidence modes automatically: a verified first-party or explicitly reusable photograph when one exists, Google's live Street View or map embed at the project coordinates, or a cited reporting card when no panorama can honestly show the result.

The 16 Louisville records keep detailed matched-angle shot specifications for future first-party photography, but those specifications are an upgrade path, not a public placeholder. Until an original photograph is captured and verified, the page uses the same live coordinate-based evidence as the rest of the global archive.

Reusable photographs are downloaded only when their asset page records a compatible license or public-domain status. Every hosted image carries author, source, and license metadata. We never screenshot, download, or re-host Street View or other mapping imagery; Google's own player remains the fallback when no reusable photograph passes the identity and rights checks.

Renderings remain externally linked and credited because they are copyrighted. We do not copy them merely to fill a layout. The reality side is complete on-site; the proposal side opens the original publication where the rendering can be viewed in its source context.

Sourcing

Every claim on an entry page has a source listed at the bottom of that page. This review links to 271 unique source pages across the archive. Where reporting disagrees, for example on a final room count, the entry says the reporting disagrees rather than picking the number that reads better.

Broken Sidewalk has covered Louisville development for years and several entries here lean on its reporting. It is credited on those pages and worth reading directly.

Corrections

If something here is wrong, email hello@rendervsreality.com and we will fix it. Corrections are not a favor, they are the job.

Global by design

Render vs Reality tracks projects across the United States and around the world. The founding Louisville set remains at its own index as the archive's original field-research collection.

Projects elsewhere live at global permalinks and carry their city and country as visible metadata. Their built results are documented through public street-level imagery and cited reporting, so the archive can expand worldwide without pretending every comparison uses the same evidence.