Portals of Valletta, Conrad Thake, Photographer: Charles Paul Azzopardi

Description

‘Portals of Valletta’ seeks to analyse and dissect the special contribution that doors and portals have had in the formation of the city’s architecture. The raison d’être of this photographic study is that through an intensive focus on that unique architectural element of doors one can appreciate the aesthetic diversity and better understand the dynamics of socio-cultural and political forces that have formed the city over time. This book celebrates the diversity of portals and doors in Valletta.

‘Portals of Valletta’ presents a representative selection of doors and portals within their urban and social context, ranging from the monumental portals of Baroque churches and palaces, to the exquisitely-crafted doorways of townhouses and apartment blocks to the mundane doors of the most humble dwellings in the city’s poorer neighbourhoods, as exemplified in the graffiti-splattered and rust-ridden metal doors of some kerrejja at the lower-end of the city. The door becomes an architectural metaphor for social and community diversity.

Hardbound + Jacket

Publication date: November 2017