About The Project

At the end of 2005, I visited the construction site of a new upcoming performing arts center – the “Tempe Center for the Arts”, a collaborative project by Architekton and Barton Myers Associates.

Fascinated by the structure, the dynamism and the constant change that was taking place in this context, I kept visiting the site until it neared its completion in the summer of 2007. I shot almost 4,000 pictures in this span of time and I compiled them by trying several solutions: sometimes the work is a montage of pictures shot from different vantage points and/or different days, at other times I let the software reconstruct the scene seamlessly, while leaving the edge rough.

During this project, I asked myself how photography could relate to a place that is under construction. I had the blueprint of the Center as well as detailed descriptions and even the ultra realistic computer renderings showing how it would look in its final stage. But under construction means that functional and structural identities remain unclear and almost like the ruins of an ancient civilization a lot is left to your own imagination to define the final shape. I found it fascinating that what I was seeing at the time of my surveys quickly reappeared under a different form.

This project was included in the inauguration exhibition of the performing Art Center, “But It’s A Dry Heat”, September 2007, and become part of the Public Art Collection of the city of Tempe.

Media and Links

But it’s a dry heat”, inauguration exhibition of the performing Art Center

PBS video about the Center

360 virtual tour

Don Fassinger, General Manager of the Tempe Center for the Arts talks about the many events that are held each year at the facility