Cuba, 2024 and London, 2022

There is a growing trend within architecture: young architects sidestepping practice and moving into photography. For me, this is not without its problems. It risks losing creative polarity , polarity that often produces the most compelling work. Great architectural photography often comes from a position of difference - perspective, that creates energy. When architects photograph other architects’ work, there is sometimes a tendency toward a shared way of seeing, a kind of visual consensus.

Lorenzo to his credit is an exception to this. His work retains that sense of polarity - a distinct, independent way of looking that challenges rather than simply reflects.

In a world where photography has become a form of currency, often driven by the need to attract attention, it’s refreshing to encounter work that is so deliberately underplayed.

There is a restraint. A confidence.

Because some architecture doesn’t need to shout… and nor do the pictures

Cuba, 2024 (from The Possibility Of series) and London, 2022 (from Elizabeth Mews series for Trewhela Williams) are two works by Lorenzo Zandri, an architectural photographer and artist based between London and Paris. Trained as an architect in Rome and Paris, Zandri chose to leave construction behind and focus entirely on the image as his medium. His practice sits between documentation and interpretation, using photography not just to show architecture, but to question how it is seen, experienced, and remembered.

In Cuba, 2024, from the series The Possibility Of, Zandri documents a landscape where infrastructure, architecture, and natural terrain intersect. The image captures a sense of scale and distance, where human presence is present but not dominant. It reflects his interest in how places are shaped over time through both built intervention and environmental condition.

Elizabeth Mews, London (2022) for Trewhela Williams focuses on the conversion of a garage within a mews house in Primrose Hill into a family home. The project works within an existing conservation context, carefully reworking the street-facing façade with an oak fin structure that controls light, privacy, and ventilation. Inside, the space is organised along a linear axis, connecting street and courtyard through a restrained material palette and a clear spatial sequence.

Zandri’s practice is driven by a consistent focus on how architecture is experienced rather than just seen. Through both commissioned work and independent series, he uses photography to reveal the spatial, material, and atmospheric qualities of the built environment, treating the image as an extension of architectural thinking.