This editorial examines the aesthetic and documentary value of architectural photography during construction, demolition, ruin and urban transformation. Cristina Gastón and Judit Taberna argue that buildings in transitional states possess a distinctive visual power, because they expose provisional forms, hidden structures and spatial conditions that disappear once architecture reaches its completed or functional phase. Through three photographic projects, the editorial demonstrates how images can reveal the material, temporal and imaginative dimensions of the built environment in moments of change.
The first case, Martí Llorens’s Icarian Archive, records the demolition of Barcelona’s industrial Icaria neighbourhood and the subsequent construction of the Olympic Village. Combining pinhole and conventional photography, Llorens’s extensive collection documents both a city in transition and photography itself in transition, as analogue practices gave way to digital technologies. His work shows the photograph as a portal to vanished urban worlds whose historical value increases over time.
The second case, Sol Diéguez García’s study of scaffolding in New York, reframes a widely criticised urban nuisance as an aesthetic and historical phenomenon. By focusing on contemporary scaffolding and its visual connection to nineteenth-century debates on iron construction, the article suggests that temporary structures can reshape the perception of iconic architecture, including the Flatiron Building.
The third case, Oscar Barnay’s analysis of Joel Sternfeld’s photographs of the High Line, highlights photography’s capacity to influence public opinion, preservation campaigns and urban design. Sternfeld’s seasonal images transformed an obsolete railway into a compelling landscape, helping to support its rehabilitation as a public park.
Overall, the editorial presents photographic reportage as a critical medium for discovering the concealed structures, provisional conditions and latent possibilities that underpin visible architectural form. It positions construction photography not as secondary documentation, but as a means of interpreting urban change, memory and architectural imagination.