E R O T O A R C H I T E C T U R E S

PHOTOGRAPHY | CREATIVE CONCEPT | PROJECT
Project details

Erotoarchitecture is a portmanteau coined for a photographic series inspired by improbable and asymmetrical architectural details of existing buildings. I have started developing the visual concept in 2012, after the positive response to a personal exhibition about the Swiss architect Le Corbusier. Being an architect myself, I presented to the public images that transposed, under a personal vision and the incidence of natural light, some specific architectural details that radically transformed the way in which the building was perceived. Encouraged by the extraordinary critical response to my Le Corbusier exhibition, I have pursued the concept of transposed and decomposed architectural volumes under a precise coordination of natural light even further.

Later in 2015, my new series evolved into a sensitive space syntax analysis of architectural details, using the artificial light for interior spaces. The low-lit images of interior spaces are in stark opposition to the ones taken under natural light. The series accentuates compositional turns from major blacks to minor grays. Even the light is managed differently, from soft decomposing grays for exterior spaces with natural light to roughly shot shadows for interior ones.

Project selection

Forming Light | 2014

Different in purpose and composition from both the isolated elements and the unitary execution of the so-called ‘erotic architecture’, the concept for Erotoarchitecture series holds an ambivalent vision. I do not bring forth an architectural sexual innuendo. I neither preach, nor even claim to exist, in fact, some self-evident social function of the erotic imprinted upon existing designs. I do not seek to contrast functionality and aesthetics. Conversely, my aim is to encourage a perceptive dissonance, meant to entice the imagination of the viewer. It is not a lesson in architectural appreciation, but an open invitation to the viewer to allow him/herself to be seduced by forgetting about the teleology of urbanism and just take an ever-closer, intimate look.

Project gallery

Unified by the unconventional theme, my images talk about the spatial continuity, about fluidity, about surprising details, curves or edges, about perfection, but mostly about the sought-after imperfection of architectural forms and shapes. They speak of the choice of the onlooker to engage him/herself in a sensual dialogue with such imperfections. Zooming-in to certain details, the architectural remnants generate an archive of different frames, unified by contrast under a specific volumetric light. Such an archive turns to be an unexpected labyrinth of fortuitous passions, and, as such, transforms a public open-space into an intimate cloister of sensuous nuances. The lines that I’m encasing within a photograph courageously suffer a gradual transition, by the virtue of harnessed light, from orthogonality to curvature, from the beginning to the end of the series … The aftermath is in the eye of the beholder.

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