Stefano Perego started his career in 2006 by exploring and photographing abandoned industrial sites in Northern Italy. He has since expanded his range to visit abandoned buildings in various parts of the world, from East Europe to the former Soviet Union and from the Caucasus to Central Asia. His photographs have been featured in notable publications like ArchDaily, Designboom, Domus, and Architectural Digest. Perego’s book, Soviet Asia: Soviet Modernist Architecture in Central Asia, is a comprehensive project that documents the architectural history of Soviet architecture in Central Asia, capturing many buildings for the first time.

Perego’s journeys focus on architecture influenced by modernism, postmodernism, and brutalism. He travels thousands of kilometres to find structures from different periods. His archive particularly emphasises brutalist architecture that emerged as a post-war rebirth in the 1950s as a style characterised by exposed raw concrete. With today’s economic and social transformations in the backdrop, he focuses on high-rises that appear like monumental masses, bearing the weight of their respective eras.

The architectural figures displayed in Perego’s wide frames are remarkably diverse: vast social housing complexes with striking geometric forms and sharp angles, monumental buildings adorned with sculptural details, and public spaces with a rhythm achieved by the repetition of round windows and corridors. Each structure reveals hints of its own story through its intriguing architectural features and the interplay of light, the changing seasons, and a sense of solitude.

Stefano Perego

28 September – 13 October 2024

Akaretler 37 – 39