The Architecture of Transit is a show about transforming the apparently banal into the sublime. Photographer Sue Barr, who has spent her career lovingly cataloguing the structural dynamics and textural beauty of raw concrete around the world, has traversed the rocky regions between the Alps and Naples, capturing the most impressive elements of Italy’s post-war civil engineering program.
Admittedly, this might sound rather dry, but Barr injects a bit of romance through the revelation that these very landscapes were once the nexus of Western cultural obsession with antiquity. It was amongst the hills and gorges that the moneyed participants of the 17th and 18th century ‘Grand Tour’ would stroll, hoping to discover the source of the sublime landscape depicted in classical painting.
A very different sort of Arcadia exists today, offering the motorist the grandstand seats as they sweep through the foothills on vast concrete pillars, the roads arching out on great elevated sections and through long tunnels. On the ground, however, the landscape has changed forever, the new layer of concrete and structure bringing to mind another rich source of classical imagery, the carceri, or prisons, etched from the imagination of the 18th century artist Giovanni Battista Piranesi. Although the modern motorist may never soak up these references as they rush along the autostrada, Barr’s large-scale images offer a rare chance to drink it all in.
Isole del Cantone, Liguria, Italy
Rodi, Ticino, Switzerland
Genova, Liguria, Italy
Genova, Liguria, Italy
Naples, Campania, Italy
Voltri, Liguria, Italy
Vomero, Campania, Italy
Naples, Campania, Italy
Pontebba, Friuli Venezia Giulia, Italy
-
A new Oxford Street pop-up celebrates IKEA's blue bagsIKEA's iconic blue bag gets its own pop-up concept store, the 'Hus of Frakta'.
-
Audemars Piguet and Kaws have created the Royal Oak Concept watch we didn't know we neededThe Audemars Piguet x Kaws Royal Oak Concept Tourbillon 'Companion' is slick wrist-worn art
-
A friendly rivalry coloured by kinship: Wendy Maruyama and Tom Loeser on their two-artist show'I wanted to make furniture, just not traditional furniture, but weird furniture,' says Wendy Maruyama on ‘Colorama’, a two-artist show presented at design gallery Superhouse (until 11 January 2025)
-
Inside Ricardo Bofill’s Walden 7, a cathedral of postmodern curiosityA new series by architectural photographer Sebastian Weiss takes us on a tour of Walden 7, Ricardo Bofill’s majestic Catelonian apartment building – a cathedral of utopian curiosity and community
-
Heaven on Earth: architect Toshiko Mori curates Candida Höfer’s sublime new photography showAt Sean Kelly, New York, architect Toshiko Mori is curating a new show by Candida Höfer, spanning a 30-year period of the German photographer’s spatially sublime work
-
10 Wallpaper* photography moments of 2022, from piña coladas to Pipilotti RistThe most memorable Wallpaper* photography moments of 2022, courtesy of our esteemed photo desk
-
‘Site Unseen’ explores viewing and documenting architecture through photographyThe Center of Contemporary Photography in Melbourne invites us to ‘Site Unseen', an exhibition about different ways of viewing and documenting architecture
-
Ricardo Bofill’s La Muralla Roja as captured by Sebastian WeissAs a tribute to architecture icon Ricardo Bofill (1939 – 2022) we revisit Hamburg-based photographer Sebastian Weiss’ captivating photo series on ‘La Muralla Roja’, first published in 2020
-
A photographic trip through America’s roadside façadesIn her ongoing series, The Mother Road, Hayley Eichenbaum documents the tainted romanticism of roadside architecture on Route 66 in the American Southwest
-
Architectural photographer Dennis Gilbert (1951-2021): an appreciationArchitectural photographer Dennis Gilbert has died aged 70. Founder of View Pictures, one of the foremost agencies for architectural imagery, and an honorary fellow of RIBA, he helped shape our perception of contemporary architecture
-
Photographer Dia Mrad captures aftermath of 2020 Beirut explosionArchitecture-trained photographer Dia Mrad’s first solo show, ‘The Road to Reframe', captures local architecture after the Beirut explosion of 2020, in terrible, dramatic, ‘surrealist' stillness
