Barcelonas unexpected Architecture

This photographic project showcases unexpected architecture that I discovered and photographed while walking in Barcelona. These buildings possess their own unique personalities, standing out and surprising viewers, not necessarily conforming to conventional standards of beauty. Some were designed by renowned architects, while others remain completely unknown.

Benidorm, 2000

Rising between the Mediterranean Sea and the mountains of the Costa Blanca, Benidorm is one of Europe’s most distinctive urban landscapes. During the second half of the twentieth century, a small fishing town was transformed into a dense vertical city built almost entirely around tourism.

Photographed in 2000 using a Sinar 4×5 inch large-format camera, this series was produced through a slow and deliberate working process. Each photograph required careful preparation, observation and composition, an approach that contrasts with the speed and transience often associated with tourism itself.

Rather than focusing on tourism as spectacle, the photographs examine the relationship between people, architecture and leisure in a place where everyday life unfolds on an exceptional scale. Tower blocks line the beaches, creating an urban skyline more commonly associated with major metropolitan centres than with a seaside resort.

Visitors, residents, apartment towers, beaches and public spaces merge into a landscape that blurs the boundaries between urban life and recreation. The sea and the surrounding mountains provide a dramatic backdrop to a city that appears both improbable and inevitable.

The images reveal Benidorm as a place of contrasts: density and openness, nature and construction, individuality and collective experience. Viewed through the slow and meticulous process of large-format photography, the city emerges not as a caricature of mass tourism but as a unique urban experiment shaped by geography, economics and human desire.

More than a tourist destination, Benidorm can be seen as one of the most successful and enduring examples of high-density urban development on the Mediterranean coast.

5x4inch Sao Paulo

At a time when space and time were radically altered by a global pandemic, looking out the window became one of the few things one could do while confined within four walls.
The movement restrictions imposed by the lockdown in Barcelona forced me to observe a very limited space: the sky, the monotonous silhouette of the city seen from the rooftop—wires, antennas, the apartment blocks of neighbors. And suddenly, amidst the stillness of a cemetery-like city, a trill, a greenfinch—birds that usually go unnoticed and that, during COVID-19, along with many other species, reclaimed the human city as their own.
The greenfinch rests on an antenna, its metal tree, its urban forest.
In a time of enforced stillness, the way we observed the world changed.
Birdwatching became the focus of a new project.
The limitations imposed by the lockdown did not shrink the world; they redefined its scale, bringing clarity to the small miracles within sight.
Time itself seemed to shift, expanding in some moments and collapsing in others.
The usual markers of routine faded away, and in their place, attention turned to the rhythm of light moving across the walls, the changes in the air, the variations in a bird’s song in the morning and evening.
Martin Heidegger spoke of “dwelling,” a deeper, more attentive way of inhabiting space. Perhaps the imposed stillness allowed us to experience space in a more “authentic” way.
The birds were not just birds; they reminded us of the confinement we were enduring.
Perhaps they were a distraction from the atrocities the pandemic was causing.
Perhaps they were reclaiming a space we insist on destroying with our relentless extractivism and ruthless capitalism, against which so many species struggle to resist.
These birds I tried to capture existed in a parallel world.
Whose world was it during the pandemic?
The birds reminded me that reality does not create smooth surfaces but porous ones—there are worlds beyond what we perceive at first glance.
It is about looking into these porous spaces, dusting off forgotten structures, and opening up possibilities for new ways of living.

The Colossus of Prora, more commonly referred to simply as “Prora,” is a massive architectural complex located in the municipality of Binz on the island of Rügen, Germany. Constructed by Nazi Germany between 1936 and 1939 as part of the Strength Through Joy (Kraft durch Freude or KdF) initiative, it comprised eight identical buildings stretching 4.5 km parallel to the beach, with surviving structures covering 3.0 km..
Although originally intended as a holiday resort, construction was left incomplete, and the complex was never utilized for its intended purpose. Instead, Prora became a significant tool for Nazi propaganda, with the regime glorifying the immense effort put into its construction as symbolic of their own strength and power.

Following World War II, the complex served various military functions, initially under the Soviet Army, then the East German Volksarmee, and later the German Bundeswehr. Today, it accommodates a sizable youth hostel, a hotel, and holiday apartments.

Designated as a significant heritage site, Prora stands as a stark reminder of Nazi architecture and ideology.

Cave dwellings in the Canary Islands are an important part of the region’s cultural and historical identity. These homes, carved into volcanic rock, have been in use for centuries and still serve various functions today.
Many traditional cave houses have been updated with modern conveniences like electricity and running water.
Thanks to their natural insulation, they maintain a steady temperature year-round, making them an energy-efficient choice. 

Brasília II, 2019

Sixteen years after my first visit, I returned to Brasília to revisit one of the twentieth century’s most ambitious urban projects. While the earlier work focused on the tensions between modernist ideals and scale, this second series concentrates on the relationship between architecture and its inhabitants.

Designed by Lúcio Costa and Oscar Niemeyer, Brasília is defined by vast distances, monumental government buildings and carefully planned residential sectors. Walking through the city today, one becomes aware of the contrast between the human body and the oversized spaces created by modernist planning. People appear small against the monumental architecture, while daily life unfolds in ways that often diverge from the intentions of the original plan.

The photographs explore this relationship between individual and city, examining how inhabitants occupy, adapt and navigate an environment conceived according to abstract architectural and political ideals. Nearly sixty years after its inauguration, Brasília remains a unique urban landscape where utopian ambitions and everyday experience continue to coexist.

This return visit forms part of an ongoing photographic investigation into planned cities and urban visions, including Chandigarh in India and Astana in Kazakhstan.

Astana, Kazakhstan

Following the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, Kazakhstan emerged as an independent nation. In 1997, President Nursultan Nazarbayev decided to move the capital from Almaty to the remote northern steppe and began constructing a new administrative centre that would become Astana.

Funded largely by revenues from oil and gas, the city grew rapidly into one of the most ambitious urban development projects of recent decades. Designed by an international roster of architects, Astana is a landscape of striking landmarks, monumental government buildings and futuristic forms. Towers, pyramids, vast shopping centres and oversized monuments rise from the flat grasslands, creating an urban environment that often appears closer to a speculative vision of the future than to a conventional city.

Photographed in 2017, this series explores the relationship between architecture, power and national identity. The images focus on the contrast between the city’s grand ambitions and the immense emptiness of the surrounding steppe. While the architecture seeks to project prosperity, progress and permanence, the vast scale of the urban landscape often produces a sense of isolation and unreality.

Astana represents a contemporary version of the planned city: a place conceived not through gradual growth but through political will, economic resources and a desire to create a new image for a nation. The project forms part of an ongoing photographic investigation into cities built from scratch, including Brasília and Chandigarh, and examines how utopian visions are translated into physical space.

Link to an article in Artsy

Brasília, 2003

Brasília was inaugurated in 1960 as the new capital of Brazil. Designed by urban planner Lúcio Costa and architect Oscar Niemeyer, the city was built from scratch in the country’s interior as a symbol of progress, modernity and national ambition. Conceived according to the ideals of modernist urban planning, Brasília remains one of the most ambitious experiments in city-making of the twentieth century.

I photographed Brasília in 2003 using mainly a 4×5 inch large-format camera. The slow and deliberate process of working with this camera echoed the city’s monumental architecture and carefully planned urban structure. The photographs focus on the relationship between architecture, open space and everyday life within a city designed according to a utopian vision.

The images reveal the tension between ideal and reality, theory and practice, planning and outcome. The red earth that surrounds and penetrates the city becomes a recurring presence throughout the work, a constant reminder of the physical landscape upon which this modernist dream was imposed. Buses, bicycles and traces of daily life introduce an element of unpredictability, quietly challenging the image projected by the grand governmental buildings and symbols of progress.

This work marked the beginning of an ongoing photographic interest in cities conceived according to ambitious social and architectural visions, a line of research that would later lead to projects in Chandigarh, India, and Astana, Kazakhstan.

The Chabolas of Madrid

The word chabola refers to a self-built dwelling, often constructed from recycled or inexpensive materials. During the second half of the twentieth century, large chabolas settlements emerged on the outskirts of several Spanish cities, housing communities that lived largely outside formal urban planning and infrastructure.

When I first met the inhabitants of the chabolas, I was introduced to the leader of the Roma community.

He advised me to ask each family individually for permission before taking photographs.

I was deeply impressed by the way the interiors of the huts were arranged. They revealed a world of fantasy, individuality and creative improvisation. Few traces of the so-called modern world were present, a world in which design often produces a high degree of uniformity.

In many huts, Tetra Pak packaging was used as wallpaper, helping to protect the interiors from humidity. One resident told me that he also appreciated the colourful atmosphere created by the recycled juice cartons.

Each family had built its own home, often with the support of neighbours and relatives. The chabolas existed like small islands, surrounded by congested motorways and newly built suburban housing developments. Daily life was shaped by a strong sense of community and by rules and traditions established within the settlement itself.

The chabolas I photographed contrasted sharply with the stereotypical image often associated with informal settlements. Despite limited resources, many homes displayed remarkable care, ingenuity and personal expression.

Madrid, 2003. Commissioned by Colors Magazine.