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Altre Architetture

Photographs and frames by Giovanni Ghirardi

Still, Milan
Via Zamenhof 11
15 May – 4 July 2026
Opening: Thursday 14 May 2026, 7 pm
Curated by Alessandro Curti and Alessio Fusi

Exhibition invitation on a plum background: Giovanni Ghirardi, Altre Architetture, Still, 15 May – 4 July, opening Thursday 14 May at 7 pm, with the photograph Interno con vasca
Interno con vasca, Kolmanskop, 2024

The exhibition

From 15 May to 4 July 2026, Still presented Giovanni Ghirardi. Altre architetture, a previously unseen project curated by Alessandro Curti and Alessio Fusi.

On show, photographs that recount urban and industrial space through an analytical and poetic gaze. Industrial zones, service spaces, silent peripheries and abandoned places become, in these images, true cathedrals of modernity.

Far from the spectacular aesthetic of the starchitects, the work examines architecture in its essence: volumes, surfaces, proportions. Concrete, glass and steel are turned into essential visual scores, where light shapes the volumes and silence becomes the protagonist.

From Italy to Namibia and on to the great global cities — among them New York, Atlanta, San Francisco, Milan and London — the exhibition traces a landscape made of geometry and order, where every line and every shadow invites contemplation.

From the critical essay

Giovanni Ghirardi does not document buildings; he analyzes volumes, isolates surfaces, measures relationships. His photography constructs an architecture of seeing.

These “other” architectures do not coincide with the spectacular icons of the so-called starchitects. Ghirardi directs his gaze toward industrial zones, peripheries, and functional structures. It is here that he discerns a silent order. In this attitude one recognizes a continuity with the Italian tradition — from Luigi Ghirri to Gabriele Basilico — yet without nostalgic citation. If Basilico listens to the city, Ghirardi dissects it.

The work does not end with the act of shooting but lives on in the print, in the choice of paper, in the hand-built frame. Photography and object coincide and identify with one another.

Alessandro Curti, The care of seeing

The book

Altre Architetture, published by Grafiche Antiga in May 2026 in a limited edition of 200 copies. Edited by Alessio Fusi and Alessandro Curti, with a critical essay by Alessandro Curti and art direction by Alessio Fusi. Bilingual, Italian and English, 102 pages, 49 plates in four sections: Interiors, Architectures, Paths, Thresholds.

The volume was presented at Still on Thursday 25 June 2026, in conversation with Paolo Giubileo, Alessandro Curti and Alessio Fusi.

Cover of the book Altre Architetture by Giovanni Ghirardi: a stone staircase with a wrought-iron balustrade under a vault, warm ochre tones, the title in white capitals across the top

Jackfruit

Ten of the exhibited photographs were sold in support of Jackfruit, an association working to secure education, health care and access to essential infrastructure and services for children living in vulnerable conditions. The entire proceeds were donated.

Press

Il Sole 24 Ore · 17 May 2026 — a photograph from the exhibition published in the newspaper.
Panorama · June 2026
Dentrocasa · May 2026

See the press page →

The frames

The subtitle of the exhibition — photographs and frames — is not incidental. Since 2024 every frame is built by hand in the studio, starting from raw wood, with timbers and materials chosen in dialogue with the individual image. The frame is not an aesthetic complement: it is part of the work.

See the wood framing page →

The works on show

Scroll sideways · click an image to enlarge

Bare room with a staircase rising on the right, pale peeling plaster, a panel leaning against the floor
Garage corridor with pale green walls and a pink dado, a fluorescent tube overhead and a convex mirror
Corridor with a row of open doors, peeling walls and a pale wooden floor
Narrow corridor framing a yellow door at its end, reddish wooden floor
Vaulted corridor lined with turquoise majolica, terracotta floor, light entering from the far end
Baroque staircase with a stone column, tiered arches and a carved balustrade
Vaulted room with ochre walls and a small arched window at the centre
Row of arches painted pale blue, with red barrier tape in the foreground
Room with peeling blue and ochre walls and a doorway on the right
Theatre corridor with yellow walls and the illuminated signs USCITA and ARTISTI
Industrial grid ceiling with skylights, shot from below in symmetry
Curved stacked balconies of a hotel atrium, shot vertically in mirrored symmetry
Modular concrete building in black and white beneath a sky of dark clouds
Black and white facade articulated by windows of irregular sizes
Brown facade with square and rectangular windows arranged irregularly
Corner building with a curved facade, in black and white against a black ground
Building with a curved banded facade shot from below against a white sky
Tower of blue glass grid raised on pillars, shot frontally
Black and white skyscrapers converging upward against a black sky
Two metal rails crossing over a concrete surface
Cracked yellow asphalt beside a band of grey concrete
Pale industrial building with a silo, pipework and service structures
Concrete wall with vertical reinforcing bars and ochre streaks
Tiered steps shot from above in black and white, with a metal walkway structure
Garage interior with orange shutters and warm light reflected on the floor
Long dark garage corridor with a beamed ceiling receding in perspective
Stone surface with regular rectangular recesses, shot flat
Garage with a GARAGE sign on the far wall and a white and blue striped barrier
Vaulted stone underpass with light entering from the far end
White tiled underground corridor with a yellow tactile guidance path on the floor
Low rendered stone wall with a volcanic landscape and cloudy sky beyond
Stone wall with raised recesses arranged in regular rows
Abandoned room with wide windows facing the sea
Room with pale blue walls and a door opening onto a space lit in orange, sand on the floor
Room with pink and red walls and a green door, the floor covered in sand
Yellow room with doors framing a succession of blue spaces, sand on the floor
Blue room with a row of open doors and sand drifted across the floor
Room with pink walls, a white door ajar and sand on the floor
Doorway framing a peeling turquoise wall, with sand on the floor
Detached door leaf leaning across a blue room invaded by sand
Peeling blue wooden door set in an ochre wall, sand on the floor
Stripes of light and shadow cast by wooden slats across the walls and floor of a room
Room with ochre walls, a closed door and a notice fixed to it
Room with green walls, an enamelled bathtub and sand on the floor
Black and white view from above of a cast-iron manhole cover set in flowering grass
Black and white view from above of an oval drainage grate with three slots, surrounded by grass and small flowers
Detail of a rendered wall with a pipe and a round concrete disc
Abandoned room, a green door frame opening onto an ochre room with sand covering the floor
Room with blades of light cast by wooden slats across a wall bearing red graffiti
Abandoned room striped with light from slatted boards, with open doorways and sand on the floor
Empty road with a distant skyline of high-rise towers and roadworks in the foreground
Weathered green wooden door set in a wall of stone and white lime render
Concrete panels in the foreground with a brick building rising behind
Concrete wall with protruding rusted metal beams
Wall of coloured brickwork forming a mosaic pattern in red and blue
Concrete wall with a red pipe, exposed brickwork and two electrical sockets
Abandoned room with peeling pale blue walls and sand drifting across the floor
White door frame opening onto a wall washed in a green and turquoise gradient, sand on the floor
Concrete panels set against an exposed brick wall
Concrete underpass with light entering through an angled opening
Industrial roof of metal trusses with skylights and hanging lamps
Concrete wall with a basketball hoop mounted on it
Rusted metal shutter with a maker's plate at its centre