UCU
renovated building
on Sventsitskogo St.

Розмір

6710 × 5266

Photo: 2025 – 2026

For me, the sense of space, the emotions, and the overall impression of a place are fundamental to architectural photography. It is difficult to put into words what a sunrise in a park feels like when you are the only person there, surrounded by silence and birdsong. Beneath your feet lies a vast lawn covered in morning dew, while ahead of you the massive façade of an early twentieth-century building, designed by the renowned architect Władysław Derdacki, slowly emerges from the dawn twilight. This was my first experience photographing a historical building of such scale. I often work with large architectural projects, but classical architecture is a different conversation altogether. One must understand that most classical buildings were designed around a central axis of symmetry. To convey the logic, order, and sense of grandeur that the architect embedded in the design more than a century ago, composition often has to be built around symmetry itself. Finding the exact central viewpoint is particularly important. At this scale, shifting the camera by even a few millimetres can noticeably disrupt both the perspective and the symmetry of the image. This was something I became especially aware of during the project. Classical architecture was often created to inspire a sense of grandeur. Scale therefore becomes another essential aspect to consider when photographing buildings designed according to the classical order. Including people in the frame is one of the most effective ways to communicate the relationship between human scale and architectural elements. The size of the building also presented a purely technical challenge. Capturing a frontal view of a façade nearly one hundred metres long is no simple task. The renovated UCU campus building is located next to several parks, and its grounds themselves feel very much like a park landscape. For that reason, it was important for me to show not only the architecture itself but also its relationship with the surrounding environment under different weather conditions and lighting situations. The large areas of glazed façades in the new extension introduced additional challenges, requiring careful planning and the selection of the right lighting conditions in order to reveal their visual qualities and present them at their best.