Federico Villa, design and the Anthropocene

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Bomori Architetti, Roma, photo courtesy Federico Villa

The Como-born photographer homes in on design and architecture, as well as exploring the complex relationship between humans and nature

Plusultra Studio, near Milano, photo courtesy Federico Villa

Villa specialises in design and architecture, photographing iconic objects such as the Artemide lamp and Osvaldo Borsani’s armchairs, or the typical forms of architects’ interiors for leading sectoral publications. The other side to his work leverages “photography as a language for archiving the contemporary through a critical reading of the relationship between the natural and the artificial.”

Torre Milano, photo courtesy Federico Villa

Are the ski station, seen as an intrusive out of place micro-world, and the submerged bench (caused by rising sea levels?) examples of human invasion and nature fighting back? Then, like still lifes, there are his heaps of cartridge cases, of graphite pencil stubs, allusive of a discourse on raw material extraction and hunting, as if taken from a bottomless natural pit, transformed into an added value not without knock-on effects.