Expo during the dismantling

Filippo Poli, the professional photographer, specialized in architectural and landscape photography, documents the last phase of the Expo process in Milan.

With these words he describes his suggestive experience: "I went back to Milan Expo during the dismantling, some months ago I had literally to fight to find a good position to shoot the pavilions, now I walk alone in the empty Decumano. The site seems to be a post atomic landscape; the metal devouring machines and the giant saws suddenly interrupt the unnatural silence and remind me the reason of my visit: document the last phase of the Expo process."

"Countries are committed to leave the plot as they received it, but unfortunately many buildings are being destroyed and not dismantled as the organization promised. Some pavilions have evaporated, on the ground some sign of the foundations and mud; others lie ripped, someone else seems to have been bombed, but it stoically stands."

He continues: "Volunteers rescued many plants but the green that cannot survive without artificial irrigation is already dead and in the meantime the Third landscape has quickly took some areas of the site between the skeletons of structures and the abandoned gardens.

It is too early to give a final opinion on this experience, it is not clear if it would be cleaver to leave the pavilions (as in the negative experience of Seville ’92) or to be back to zero point with lands ready to receive new speculations. The next bet is the birth of the Italian Human Technopole, by today the most probably destination of the site."

Graduated in architecture at Milan Polytechnic and with a master degree in urban culture “Metropolis” at the UPC Barcelona, Filippo Poli (Milan, 1978) is a professional photographer.

He collaborates with architecture offices and publishes regularly in the main international architecture magazines.

In 2012 he won the ArchTriumph Award and in 2014 he got the 3rd prize at PX3 awards, he got mentions at the IPA, Photography Master Cup and Basho Award.

He has participated to collective exhibitions in Italy and U.S.A and in 2014 he was invited to present a personal work on Asnago Vender architecture at the Venice Biennale.

In 2015 he extensively documented the Expo in Milan working on assignments for architects, institutions and magazines.