Abstract

The target of Architecture has shifted from “attending the person in all its dimensions” to “generating a universe of surprising, beautiful and photogenic forms and spaces” relegating those who will use them to a second level or total oblivion. The phenomenon is easily detected by studying the traces of photographic memory, and this helps to focus on what really matters. This worrying evidence questions the role assigned to the inhabitant when making project decisions, the relationship between the inhabitants, architects and photographers, the teaching impact of these lifeless images of architecture, and how this affects our present and the future of the profession. Photography, the incorruptible witness of recent history, shows behind a filter of “makeup” what can be seen, and reveals what we don’t want to see. The still life architecture is contagious when teaching and leads us also to design and photograph “empty” spaces instead wishing them to be “interestingly habitable”, thinking more about the “appearance” rather than the “experience”. This needs an urgent revision and a global change of awareness or we will end up reducing the architecture to a superficial, marginal and dispensable social role associated with the Botox-shop.