m i r a b i l i a

travelling watching recording

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Abandoned workshop.

I don’t remeber where I took this picture. It must have been not far from Brescia, a bigger city in Northern Italy. The empty workshop seemed to have been abandoned long time before. It just stayed there, offering shadow to the travellers overheated by the sun and giving house to the birds.

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Castelvecchio, Verona

Old and new coexisting in the Castelvecchio castle in Verona. Carlo Scarpa’s restoration transformed a traditional Medieval building in a modern fascinating place to discover in every detail.

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Growing city. 

In the train station area of Mestre, near Venice, the city is growing. Within few months a big building was replaced by a bigger one. Between the railways and this brand new high-rise, a huge construction site is the sign of this steady development.

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Athens. Between buildings. 

Not far from the ruins of the ancient Greek temples, among old traditional Athenian houses, you can find vacant lots waiting to be filled by new buidlings. Or not. 

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Vienna or anywhere. 

City suburbs could be mostly interchangeable: high-rises, small windows, grey surfaces, desert streets lacking identity look the same everywhere.  

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Deutschland. Plattenbau.

My first apartment in Germany was in a plattenbau (prefabricated building). Everything in that building was designed to be functional and to satisfy the needs of the many families living there. At first I was irritated by the tiny flats, the thin walls, the sticky linoleum floors. Then I found out the shared small garden, the laundry, the floor-kitchen, all managed by an efficient caretaker. Many prefabricated buildings were built in Germany after WW II and after that they’ve become a symbol of the former DDR. Now most of those buildings are used as students residencies or they are administrated by the municipality for social housing. In some cities plattenbauten are witnessing the gentrification of the area where they were built. I wonder how long they will resist.