Ambiente urbano, made between 1970 and 1980 and anticipating the celebrated Milano. Ritratti di fabbriche, is a key project for understanding the whole of Gabriele Basilico's work. Documenting the growth of public housing and photographing children and workers in the streets of Milan rather than the official face of monumental buildings, Basilico immediately identified the ground from which to study and understand the sense of the city, always the central theme of his work. In this sequence the pictures follow one another like index cards, building a survey of the built environment on the edges of the expanding city.