Gianni Berengo Gardin fotografa Renzo Piano

In 1979, Gianni Berengo Gardin started his long-lasting collaboration with Renzo Piano taking pictures of the construction sites where the most celebrated architectures of the Genoese architect were rising up. Berengo Gardin himself selected thirty pictures he shot during more than twenty years of collaboration and friendship with Piano. This pictures, rigidly black and white, eternalize groups of objects, bodies, people, that actually are architectures, even if they are not yet buildings. Nothing to do with the architectural pictures that we usually see on magazines or websites. Berengo’s pictures show something that is frequently hidden in finished architectures: structures, transparence, continuity, forms without function. The aim is not to celebrate the building as a product, but to focus on the construction site as a stage where we can measure the social and technological evolution of our society, becoming aware of the work of a multitude of people that disappears when the construction process ends. The “builder” Piano seen trough the eyes of the “photo reporter” Berengo. Two kindred spirits that demand to be pragmatic, but nevertheless are visionaries: they chase after the moment when their visions become Truths.

Location: Palazzo Ducale, Genova, Italy
Year: 2018
Client: Fondazione Ordine degli Architetti PCC di Genova
Curators: Guido Risicato (P46architettura+), Lorenzo Trompetto (gosplan architects)
Exhibition design: gosplan architects, P46architettura+
Graphics: Fluido
Thanks to: Agenzia Contrasto, Archivio Gianni Berengo Gardin, Fondazione Renzo Piano, Palazzo Ducale Fondazione per la Cultura