One City,
Two Visions
THE LENS BETWEEN EASTERN INTERIORITY AND WESTERN RADIANCE
THE LENS BETWEEN EASTERN INTERIORITY AND WESTERN RADIANCE
Interviewing Arnaud Philippe
EST8: Living somewhere else, traveling abroad, what’s your special vision?
Arnaud: When an architect travels, he is not a tourist. Travel becomes a study of climate, history, culture, and the lives contained between them. Travel also leads me to think in layers: the wide view for relationships, the human-scaled view for experience, the intimate view for intention.
Buildings reveal identity; proportion reveals how it’s measured. What matters is the interaction between people and buildings. To this aspect, architecture and cuisine are comparable: both depend on balance and proportion.
EST8: Architecture as a language, how does it speak to you?
Arnaud: For me, the city is a table; architecture is the dishes; details are the ingredients — light, volume, movement, arranged by axis, calibrated in proportion, clarified by void.
Architecture has a fourth dimension: time. It runs through everything, and you can read the stories it leaves: joints that darken, thresholds polished by use, shadows that move like punctuation across the day.
Captured on nubia Z80 Ultra as instrument: grid keeps axis, 35 mm lens’ view keeps human proportion, exposure control preserves void in light.
EST8: How would you describe the difference between Asian traditional architecture and European style?
Arnaud: Globalisation blurs borders, but structures of life differ. The private house, where people actually live, is complex. Today we lean toward individualism: more personal freedom, less family care. But in Asia, the house used to be a closed, cycled space.
In Asia, luxury tends inward; in Europe, it faces the street. Historically in Europe, many major buildings were religious, governmental, or defensive. We pursued monumentality—vertical display, high doors, carved façades. Asian architecture remains more discreet, expanding horizontally and integrating nature.
On nubia Z80 Ultra’s 18mm wide-angle lens.
Arnaud: Barcelona feels spontaneous. As a port city, it has always been open to outside influence. You sense it in how things are added over time—forms negotiating with each other rather than obeying a single plan: is functional, but charged with emotion and generous detail. You learn a city by reading the seams, not the slogans.
EST8: One frame you eager to shoot. What truth does the lens keep that your sketch would blur?
Arnaud: Before smartphones, we drew. Drawing trains judgment, but the world doesn’t pause for the hand. Context shifts. Light edits the story. Timing decides. The scene isn’t still. A lens keeps the scene at the scale of the eye—what is there, at that exact second, not what you prefer to remember. I frame by proportion—at the scale of the eye. The image holds only what you see standing there. Nothing invented.
On nubia Z80 Ultra’s 35mm lens, a scene at the scale of the eyes, where the beautiful encounter of life refuses to repeat. Fast, decisive autofocus and a responsive shutter make the act closer to street practice: point, lock, release—before the instant closes.
EST8: A trained eye is needed, but capturing the aesthetic moment is irreplaceable.
Arnaud: Yes, even for the people that don’t have a solid art or design acknowledgement. It is about intuition, and depends on the sensibility of everyone. Observing and capturing the unique instant of life is the key, is the reality framed by your own edit.
Lived moment captured on nubia Z80 Ultra’s 35mm lens.
Read details up close; isolate the gesture from the noise. That 35mm view—street photographers have known it for long. It doesn't perform; it reports. With nubia Z80 Ultra, to capture the true instant of life, to freeze the moment you see with your naked eye and transform it into an irreplaceable aesthetic moment. With its powerful snapshot capabilities, nubia Z80 Ultra turns the device into a companion for encounters with life, meanwhile RAW option keeps latitude for later decisions.
EST8: Beauty not only exists in the architecture, instead a practice of life.
Arnaud: Beauty isn’t in things; it’s in how you see. Must architecture be beautiful? No. Must art be beautiful? No. Both should express their own emotion. As the writer Johann Wolfgang von Goethe said, ¨Architecture is a frozen music¨, same as in our daily life, it contains so much movement, emotion, intensity and different unexpected instants. Emotion and movement birth the beauty.
As a life-aesthetic capturer, nubia Z80 Ultra renders space and movement across typical scenarios: 18 mm for spatial relation and context; 35 mm for the lived, human perspective; 85 mm for intent and texture. Pro Mode gives custom control—less automation, more responsibility—set the record of life becomes less automation, more authorship.
Captured on nubia Z80 Ultra’s 35mm lens. Pro controls on, automation dialed down.
EST8: If vision is discipline, what rule will you break tomorrow to keep it alive?
Arnaud: Travel. To see, to touch, to live. Routine prevents discovery. You must keep changing the conditions of your looking, or the work will harden into habit. The point to break is when you face a door, a street, a fragment of sky—and decide where to place the frame.
CREDITS
ARNAUD PHILIPPE
Captured on nubia Z80 Ultra’s 18mm lens.
French architect and retail-space designer based in Barcelona. Founder of APHIBOA and aPhiStudio. Works at the junction of structure and perception in commercial and retail spaces.
PHOTOGRAPHY: Rafaello Zeloncini
ASSISTANTS: Ruben Theo Kost
ART DIRECTION: EST8 MAG
STYLIST: Alejandro Lozano
MAKE UP & HAIR: Elizabeth Vailo
STARRING: Aurora From Uniko Models
CONTENT CREATIVE: EST8 MAG