The 1951 Mies van der Rohe designed Farnsworth House is an undisputed icon of 20th century modern architecture. I've always lusted after this structure, so I was happy when these exquisite photos turned up in my inbox. But just as I found myself getting all warm and cozy with the images, I noticed the text below:

• Trees are made with Onyxtree.


• The total poly count comes to approx. 10 billion. 1.34 billion for trees, 8.4 billion for grasses, 270k for house, 550k for furniture.


• Renders took roughly 6 hrs each @ 2200px


• Rendered with vrayphysicalcamera, vraysun, HDRi environment


• VRayenvironmentfog was rendered as a separate pass and screened over in photoshop


• Final colour corrections made in Adobe Lightroom

So, for a second time in less than two weeks, I was having a hard time separating reality from, well, digital reality. I can't imagine a traditional photo of the house could look any better than these renderings. Oh, the detail: dirt under the eaves, dappled light on curtains, swaths of freshly mown grass.

View the hi-res images on digital artist Peter Guthrie's Flickr set.