Studio Shaffer Lutsko

Published in POOL Magazine No. 5: Simulation, “Synthetic View: When Simulation Doubles Reality” explores how high-fidelity rendering, sensing, and digital twins create a feedback loop in which simulations no longer merely represent the world but actively shape it. The essay traces how synthetic datasets and predictive models recalibrate perception, risk, and decision-making across design and urban systems, blurring distinctions between image and environment. Highlighting the ethical stakes—opacity, bias, and authorship—it argues that architects must design for legibility within these model-driven spaces. Precision, Shaffer contends, now lies in negotiating the frictions between simulated metrics and lived reality.