EDITED BY
Deyan Sudjic
ESSAYS BY
Francesco Bonami
Valerio Paolo Mosco
Deyan Sudjic
Francesco Zanot
ART DIRECTION
Christoph Radl
Eleonora Sicolo
Published by Silvana Editoriale, with contributions from leading figures in the world of design, art, and architecture, the book showcases some of the most important projects designed by ACPV ARCHITECTS through photographs by Carlo Valsecchi.
Divided into two sections, the book explores in the first half – through a collection of 126 photographs by artist Carlo Valsecchi, taken over 12 years of travel in Italy, Germany, and Taiwan – the architectural creations of ACPV ARCHITECTS: an exchange between the built environment, landscape, and the complexity of cities. The second part of the book is a collection of project stories, from their concept and evolution to their completion, resembling a “logbook” written by ACPV ARCHITECTS.
The book is enriched by contributions from art critic Francesco Bonami, former director of London’s Design Museum Deyan Sudjic, curator and essayist Francesco Zanot, and architect Valerio Paolo Mosco.
“Architecture is visceral. A photograph is something else, in its own terms no less compelling, but not the same. Architecture itself is not to be photographed.
The quality of this book lies in this paradox. It is a collection of photographic images, and stories about those images.
The point is neither to offer a seduction, nor an explanation through the medium of images and words. Architecture exists in the moment — a matter of space, feelings and emotions. It demands to be experienced at first hand.”
Patricia Viel
“A journey through time and space, reaching into the contemporary complexities of cities, so near and so far from us, shifting the point of view further and further, to understand the mechanisms of our adaptation to the changes that community life poses ever since we stopped being nomads. A continuous movement to learn to understand, a journey of thousands of miles, going in and out, up and down, day and night.”
Carlo Valsecchi
“These photographs are identity cards for their locations. Certificates of existence. Proofs of reality.
Despite their almost geometric rigour, they are not the result of a process of exclusion or visual clearing-out, but rather signs not only of their primary subjects, but also of other objects found beyond the field of vision.”
FRANCESCO ZANOT
The volume inspired a photography exhibition (Palazzo Morando, spring 2024) organized by ACPV ARCHITECTS and Silvana Editoriale with the patronage of Municipality of Milan. The exhibition was a distilled collection of Carlo Valsecchi’s photographs presented as a visual analogy sequence: a series of large-format photographs showed how capturing architecture through the photographic medium is not a simple task. In Carlo Valsecchi’s images, architectural spaces seamlessly integrate with the landscape in a process of exchange between architecture and the city’s complexity, with projects disappearing into the profiles of hills and neighbourhoods.
