Architecture nominee

In the mid XIX century, the island of São Tomé and Principe, a former colony Portuguese in Africa come to be the world’s largest cocoa exporter. The production system stood up, between ups and downs, until 1975 when the forgetfulness has fallen on this earth.
A surprising architectural heritage is however still left: the “roças”, a Portuguese term that indicates the latifundist complex system that changed the history of this small country.
These architectures, in Portuguese and European architectural style, were a symbol of power, an off-limits area for the workers who were subjected to exhausting organization shifts and to the submission to their patrão - the landlord.
The photographic narration of about thirty roças photographed with long exposure in order to restore the idea of untouchability tries to reconstruct the memory of these places documenting the current reality and bringing to light this architectural heritage that is about to disappear forever.

Filippo Poli (Milan, 1978) studied architecture at Milan, Seville and Barcelona.
Since 2008 he specialized in architectural photography and collaborates with architecture firms and institutions. International magazines and publishers regularly publish his reportages.
In 2017 he was selected to exhibit at the prestigious European Architectural Photography Prize Architekturbild, in 2016 he got a mention at Lensculture award, in 2015 at Monochrome, in 2014 he got the third prize at PX3 Paris with a work on the social housing “Walden 7” by R.Bofill. He got mentions at IPA prize, Photography Master Cup, Philadelphia Basho award and in 2012 he won the ArchTriumph International Architectural Photography Award.
In 2015 he was one of the ten Italian architectural photographer invited to take part to the exhibition “Architettura Sintattica” on Milanese modern architecture at Expo Architecture Pavilion.
He participated to collective exhibitions in Italy and U.S.A and in 2014 he was invited to present a personal work on Asnago Vender architectures at Venice Biennale. He is actually involved in a long-term project on colonial architecture in Sao Tomé and Principe.