Exhibit Puts Design in Perspective : Environment: Display of photographs at SDSU gallery looks at buildings and how they interact with their environment.

Most of us experience the built environment in two ways: we see photos in magazines or newspapers, which attempt no comment on their subjects, or we view objects, buildings and places firsthand, seldom pausing to think how they effect us.

“Perspectives on Place: Attitudes Towards the Built Environment,” on view at the University Art Gallery at San Diego State University, is a must for anyone with more than a passing interest in design. Through 59 images, 14 German and American photographers suggest new ways of looking at the man-made elements around us, including buildings.

“I hope people who see the show will think about the built environment as a reflection of themselves, and of culture, and of certain values,” said Tina Yapelli, gallery director and organizer of the show. Yapelli intentionally selected images with no people in them. This allows viewers more freedom in formulating their own reactions and interpretations.

Nearly all of the photos were taken within the last two years. A mix of black-and-white and color, they range in size from Judy Fiskin’s groups of 2 1/4-by-2 1/4-inch prints, mostly of kitschy apartment buildings, to the 7-foot-high images of buildings photographed by Germans Thomas Ruff and Axel Hutte.

Ruff uses computer technology to manipulate objects within his color pictures. His carefully composed photos comment on buildings by placing them next to certain other buildings in carefully controlled settings.

In “Haus No. 8, I,” a monumental concrete parking structure dominates the picture, horizontal slits setting up a monotonous pattern. A street and sidewalk pass in front of the building, but no people or cars are seen. A leafless tree in the foreground adds to the desolation.

At the right hand edge of the picture, an inviting, sensitively detailed apartment building struggles for attention. It seems to have been KOd by the massive parking structure, shoved out of the way.

In a companion piece titled “Haus No. 7, II,” located in another room, roles are reversed. This time the inviting architecture, a well-proportioned brick building, probably from the 19th Century, dominates the picture. An anonymous parking structure is seen in the background.

The two pictures would have been more powerful side by side, driving home Ruff’s commentary on the continuing urban struggle between older, romantic buildings that elicit warm responses and brutal buildings such as parking garages, where utility overrides beauty.

Ruff’s decision to print images taller than human beings helps illustrate the awesome power of structures to evoke emotions ranging from fear and isolation to nostalgia for a sense of home or place.

Ruff and other Germans included in the show are disciples of German photographers Bernd and Hilla Becher, who have become well-known for their serial imagery.

The Bechers are represented by two groups of nine black-and-white images of “Winding Towers,” tall steel frames that support huge spools used to wind steel cables.

Although the Bechers could have photographed their subjects up close to make them more threatening, they have instead explored the towers as repeated geometric compositions in the landscape, structures with both utility and beauty. The irony is that these well-composed industrial towers appear more interesting than most buildings used by hundreds of people each day.

Steel frames form circles, triangles, squares and trapezoids against hills and sky. You find yourself looking closely at how the steel pieces relate to each other, how the loads and forces are distributed. The spools give an implied sense of motion, heightened by the placid natural backdrops.

In addition to the raw beauty of the towers, the Bechers’ photos expose the violent impact man has on nature, the harsh contrasts between man-made things and the soft curves and textures of the landscape.

Some of the most provocative photos in the exhibit, especially to those of us used to design magazine photos, are the brooding black-and-white images by John Gossage, from a series he made in Berlin between 1982 and 1986.

In one photo, murky shapes only slowly come together to reveal a building. The night scene is pierced by just a few small windows radiating hazy light. Another is a haunting nighttime vignette consisting of a wooden fence onto which are cast shadows of a building and a swatch of cyclone fence. In the background, a lone pine tree stands watch.

Gossage plays up the tremendous power of man-made elements to evoke deep responses that embed themselves in our subconscious, whether or not we are aware of them.

Philipp Scholz Rittermann, who moved to San Diego from Germany 13 years ago, is the only local photographer represented. Rittermann has photographed the work of local architects and landscape architects, so he brings a knowledge of formal design to bear on his photos of everyday, man-made objects in San Diego settings.

For example, Rittermann deliberately throws the foreground out of focus in his pictures to direct your attention to mid-ground and background elements.

In “Ventilator D 8,” a shot of a Chula Vista greenhouse, a large ventilating fan mounted high on the building draws you in from across the room. Up close, however, it is not sharply in focus, causing you to look around and through the fan to get at the decaying building behind it.

“Cage With Noose” shows an enclosure of wood and cyclone fencing with a rope or cable tied in a noose hanging on it.

Perhaps Rittermann means that man is hanging himself, or strangling nature, with the misshapen objects he builds then abandons in the landscape.

In each group of four small prints, Fiskin focuses mostly on apartment buildings that would be nothing more than boxes, except for some twists. A group titled “Dingbat,” for example, consists of buildings decorated with whimsical zig-zig stripes and other geometric patterns.

Architects will be especially interested in the work of James Welling, whose photos of buildings by 19th-Century architect H. H. Richardson reveal new power in the rusticated stone walls, towers and steep roofs.

The exhibit will be on display through Dec. 12. Hours are noon to 4 p.m. on Monday, Thursday and Saturday and 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. Tuesday and Wednesday. Campus parking permits are available in the gallery.