Work / Editorial Design, Graphic Design
A field guide to architecture
A field guide for 22 Chinese students touring Italy and Switzerland, with concise history, routes, and sites focused on Scarpa, Botta, and Zumthor.
Context
Cultural Association 120g was asked by a chinese architecture-themed travel agency to produce a prêt-à-porter guide for a long trip through Italy and Switzerland, carefully crafted for 22 young Chinese students exploring the architecture of both countries.
A field guide
The students needed to understand the history of each city and country on a real, moving itinerary — not as a reference to study before or after the trip, but as something to read city by city, on the road, leaning toward an architectural point of view.
Each monument, square and district on the itinerary is described and analyzed in the guide’s own pages, organized by the actual order of visit: starting from Rome, through Tuscany and Florence, arriving in Switzerland via the Veneto region in the north of Italy (with the Venice Biennale along the way). The trip’s main focus — Carlo Scarpa, Mario Botta and Peter Zumthor — set the guide’s own tone: careful attention to every particular, echoing the three architects’ own renowned care for handcrafted detail.
