The Strange, Soothing World of Instagram’s Computer-Generated Interiors

Certain elements—plastics, curves, and soft, indoor light—are more straightforward to create with 3-D-modelling software, and relatively fast for render engines to process. These features tend to dominate the genre of computer-generated fantasy architecture. (Curves also tend to be legible to the human eye, while sharp, precise edges register as unrealistic.) This has cohered into something like an aesthetic: colorful, spacious, textured, bold. The lighting is flattering, the edges are rounded, and the pools of water ripple just so.