The Smart Traveller’s Wine Guide series is written in collaboration with Club Oenologique, with comprehensive listings of restaurants, hotels, cafés and bars, points of wider cultural interest such as art galleries and museums, which wineries you can visit, how to read a Swiss wine list, Swiss winemakers’ favourite restaurants and more.

Village in the City investigates an equally specific and spectacular urbanisation process that many regions in China have been undergoing during the past two decades. The massive scale and the unprecedented speed of this process imply an incredible multiplicity of “villages in the city”. As such there are as many counter figures as there are “regular” and “normalised” urban environments that engulf these villages. Village in the City opens a window on recent research on the dynamic transformation processes villages in China are undergoing to become (parts of) cities, and contextualises this specific contemporary Chinese phenomenon in a comparative perspective for all of Asia, i.e. including India, South East Asia, and China. And it situates this development also in the history of urbanisms of inclusion.

Since 2003, the Lausanne architectural couple Alfonso Esposito and Anne-Catherine has been working persistently on a respectable oeuvre of public buildings and housing. With great respect for the relevant location and the functional requirements of the building task, they find fitting figures and inspired materials that ultimately lead to an appropriate, poetic expression.

Text in English and German.

Since 2003, the Lausanne architectural couple Alfonso Esposito and Anne-Catherine has been working persistently on a respectable oeuvre of public buildings and housing. With great respect for the relevant location and the functional requirements of the building task, they find fitting figures and inspired materials that ultimately lead to an appropriate, poetic expression.

Text in German and French.

Myanmar (Burma) exists in a timewarp and since recent political changes is becoming one of the most visited countries in the world. The country is eighty-seven per cent buddhist, studded with monastries, pagodas, dirt-track roads, oxcarts and elegant villages much as they were when the West intruded little more than 100 years ago. The country is still farmed by water buffalo, and its rituals remain true to their old-Asia form. Although tourism has increased significantly in the past 12 months there are many regions still off-limits. This book, in the form of a photo essay, captures an insider’s view of a fragile and mystical aspect of Burmese culture. The curtain is drawn to reveal the backstage of the Burmese theatre; a world populated by animist spirit media (nakadaws), monsters from the Ramayana Buddhist texts, princesses (minthami) and princes (mintha). We go behind the scenes to see the preparations of these performers as they travel around the towns and countryside between temporary bamboo stages constructed for all-night festivals. With contributing essays from Professor Ward Keeler and U Ohn Maung, this book is both a visual and informative testament to Burmese performing arts.

The area centred around the Grand Palace bordered by the Chao Phraya river on the west and Khlong Khu Muang Doem on the east is undoubtedly Bangkok’s cultural centre. Known as Rattanakosin Island, it is home to most of the city’s most important temples – Wat Pho, Wat Rajabhopit, and Wat Mahathat, to mention just a few – as well as Museum Siam and the recently renovated National Museum. To the south of this iconic area is the famous flower market, while to the north is the tourist mecca of Khao San Road. Exploring Old Bangkok takes the visitor around all the most important sights as well as explaining the meaning of lesser-known landmarks such as the Pig memorial or the Monument to the Expeditionary Force. The guide also includes iconic sights on the west bank of the river such as Wat Arun and the royal barge museum. With the opening of the magnificent metro station, Sanam Chai, access to this centre of culture and Thai art has never been easier. Alternatively, visitors can reach the area via the ever-popular tourist boats and maybe take a khlong trip from Tha Chang. Exploring Old Bangkok also features two fascinating walks and a pull-out map with suggestions of where to stay and where to eat.

“A true collector’s item…” — Tim Chan, Rolling Stone

“Filled to the brim with everything from Harry’s colour palettes to his inspiration, this pick combines high-fashion with all the quirkiness we love about HS and it’s just perfect.” — Glamour UK

“Have the best-dressed coffee table by adorning it with this book filled with photos of THE best-dressed man.” — Seventeen Magazine

“It’s a wonderful book… if you’re a Harry Styles fan or not…just have a look at how he wears clothes, look at his influences, and if you are a Harry Styles fan, it’s a double whammy.” — BBC’s Jo Good Show

“This deep dive into some of his most iconic fits is a dream gift for the person who basically spent 2021-2023 living, breathing, and eating Love On Tour.” —  Buzzfeed

“I’m incredibly lucky to have an environment where I feel comfortable being myself” – Harry Styles. 

Stepping bravely into the cyclone of 21st-century fashions, Harry Styles is more than weathering the storm. Whether he’s breaking the internet with his $7.99 frog-eyed yellow bucket hat or a pair of black fishnets, or fronting cult magazine The Beauty Papers, as he did in March 2021, Hazza’s sparkle knows no boundaries.  

Gucci met Styles in 2014, and there was instant chemistry. According to designer Alessandro Michele, Harry is ‘a young Greek God with the attitude of James Dean and a little bit of Mick Jagger’ – and that effortless superstardom certainly radiates from the photos in this collection, which document the heart of Harry’s wardrobe, both on-stage and off. 

Part fashion history lesson, pulling references from the rock and roll greats of the past, and part innovation, Harry’s style pays homage to Kurt Cobain and Marc Bolan, Prince and Little Richard, while developing into something authentic and entirely his own. This chic book fizzles with facts about Harry’s styling choices, presenting the star’s most revered looks alongside pictures that trace the roots of each design. With quotes from key designers, this is the perfect gift for any fan. 

This volume is dedicated to the phenomenon of staged photography, the trend that has revolutionised the photographic language since the 1980s.

Through over 100 works, the catalogue tells how photography was able to reach the heights of fantasy and invention between the end of the 20th and the beginning of the 21st-century, previously almost exclusively entrusted to cinema and painting.

Goldfish invading bedrooms, icefalls in the desert, imaginary cities, Marilyn Monroe and Lady D shopping together: all of this can happen thanks to veritable stages set up in order to build a parallel reality, or thanks to new technologies and, in particular, through the increasingly sophisticated use of Photoshop, released in 1990.

Photography, the realm of documentation and (presumed) objectivity becomes the realm of fantasy, invention and subjectivity, completing the last decisive evolution of its history.

Works by: Jeff Wall, Cindy Sherman, James Casebere, Sandy Skoglund, Yasumasa Morimura, Laurie Simmons, David Lachapelle, Bernard Faucon, Eileen Cowin, Bruce Charlesworth, David Levinthal, Paolo Ventura, Lori Nix, Miwa Yanagi, Alison Jackson, Julia Fullerton Batten, Jung Yeondoo, Jiang Pengyi.

Text in English and Italian.

The ‘golden age’ of advertising is usually seen to be the last decades of the 20th century, centred on Fitzrovia, vast in quantity, swamping the plethora of magazines and newspapers appearing (and disappearing) at that time, and making optimal use of the novelty of commercial television. But the true ‘golden age’ of British advertising was in the decades immediately after the First World War, when zealous entrepreneurs banded together in local clubs and in national bodies to take the activity from the back room of jobbing printers or from being sketched on the back of envelopes on ego-driven managers’ desks to becoming a valid profession.

It was in the inter-war years that Titans in the field, such as William Crawford and Charles Higham, not only built their own empires and taught the government how to publicise itself, but even morphed the concept of advertising and publicity from something rather shady and disreputable to having a moral status of being a crucial arm of the nation’s economy and an educator of the masses. This book tells the story of some of these early agencies and the contribution they made.

Claire Vasarely, a life in colour is the first retrospective devoted to Claire Vasarely (born Klára Spinner, 1909-1990). Trained in the 1920s at Műhely, the Hungarian Bauhaus, Claire Vasarely led a remarkable and eclectic career, oscillating between advertising graphics, painting, the creation of textile designs, fashion journalism and tapestry.

Completely forgotten in 20th-century art history, this book is the first publication devoted to the artist. It sets out to introduce the reader to her work and to place it at the heart of the artistic modernities of the first half of the 20th century.

Text in English, French and Hungarian. 

Welcome to the home of Wallace and Gromit, and Blackbeard and Banksy. Bristol is where the world’s first solid chocolate bar was created (Ribena was also invented here) and you can still watch delicious chocolate creations made by modern day Willy Wonkas. The city has a hidden castle (you just need to know where to look) and secret vaults underneath the Clifton Suspension Bridge only rediscovered recently after being hidden for more than 100 years. Climb inside these vaults, or into the cockpit of the final Concorde to fly or ride your skateboard in what used to be a swimming pool. If water is your thing, you can surf guaranteed waves at an inland surfing lake or take a trip in a boat that used to fight fires. Science and art collide at We The Curious, which has the UK’s only 3D planetarium.

If you think you know Bristol, think again. Allow this book to be your guide to Bristol’s best bits for kids.

Catalogue of the exhibition dedicated by La Galleria Nazionale di Roma to Vasco Bendini on the occasion of the 100th anniversary of his birth, which opened in March 2022. The volume accompanies the discovery of the career of one of the major artists of the second half of the Italian 20th century, from his early training with Giorgio Morandi, up to the great Roman solo exhibitions and the Biennales of his maturity. The work of Vasco Bendini, dear to critics such as Francesco Arcangeli and Maurizio Calvesi, opens in the immediate postwar period, following an informal language in search of the volto as a universal archetype, to then focus on gesture and matter, under the influence of, among others, Jean Fautrier. The 1960s are characterised by the inclusion in the paintings of heterogeneous objects and materials, in an approach to Arte Povera and then, with actions and installations, to the Neodada way of doing things. The central objective for Bendini remains in fact the involvement of the viewer, in a fruitful dialogue necessary for the development of his poetics. A large selection of archival photos, along with essays and alleri productions of the works, is flanked by a critical anthology and unpublished writings by the Master.

Text in English and Italian.

Close to one million people are unhoused in the United States today. Millions and millions are ill—housed – people living in shanties or leaky, mouldy trailers. And millions more are mis—housed – in houses that are abusive in their loneliness, forlorn and empty at so many levels. We can do something about it. Actually, it’s low hanging fruit, should we choose to do something; impossible, if we do not. And it’s essential, not only for the wellbeing of the individual, but also for the wellbeing of the State, and the society.

Current studies are overwhelmingly show that it is more cost effective, in terms of tax dollars earmarked for city, county, state, and federal governments, to house people than it is to just leave them outside. About $20k to $40k cheaper for each person per year. In the case of the unhoused, it also taxes our psyches and our emotions to see our neighbours sleeping on the sidewalk. It is difficult, if not impossible, to explain to our children and grandchildren how we Americans leave people outside in the cold — mentally challenged or not. Then, there is the moral issue.

If you are motivated to get a new homeless housing project moving in your town, this book is the best place to start.

Over centuries, the transnational Alpine region Tyrol – South Tyrol – Trentino (Alto Adige) has developed along ancient trade routes between Germany and Austria on one side of the Alps and northern Italy on the other. Similar to the region’s modern and contemporary architecture, its product design is in many cases rooted in a rich local tradition of craftsmanship. Yet since the 1920s, this multi-lingual region has also proven its remarkable openness to European modernism’s most progressive movements and become an unexpected laboratory for technical and formal exploration in the middle of the continent. Design from the Alps, published to coincide with an exhibition at museum Kunst Meran in autumn 2019, tells the story of a century of product design from Tyrol – South Tyrol – Trentino, highlighting the vast variety of discoveries and innovations that have emerged there. Featured artists include, among others, Fortunato Depero (1892-1960), whose experiments were inspired by the Secondo Futurismo, Gino Pollini (1903-91), a pioneer of the interwar period, as well as the celebrated architects and designers Lois Welzenbacher (1889-1955), Clemens Holzmeister (1886-1983), and Ettore Sottsas (1917-2007). Lavishly illustrated, the book follows the many protagonists of this at the same time heterogenous and collectively strong scene and offers an insightful tour d’horizon of the multifaceted design culture of western Austria and northern Italy. Design from the Alps (Kunst Meran, Merano, Italy, 11 October 2019 to 12 January 2020).

Text in English, German and Italian.

Dreamscapes is a long-term artistic project of Swiss photographer Dominic Büttner, in which he is recording actual performances at night, both in natural and built environments. Bearing a torch, he slowly walks away from his large format view camera. Time exposure captures the scenery illuminated by the moving light, and sometimes his footprints, while the artist’s figure is eradicated again from the image. At the same time familiar and strange, the fascinating pictures of enchanted or haunted landscapes tell us what an eerie place our everyday surroundings can be, depending on the light in which we see it. This first monographic book on Dominic Büttner’s art features some one-hundred of his Dreamscapes alongside essays by literary scholar and critic Elisabeth Bronfen and by publicist and art critic Nadine Olonetzky. Text in English and German.

Over the years, Swiss photographer Tomas Wüthrich has visited Borneo many times to document the daily life of the Penan, a partially nomadic indigenous people living in the rainforest of Borneo. The way of life that these hunter-gatherers lead in the Sarawak state of Malaysia is critically threatened by illegal logging and oil palm plantations.

The Penan people came to the world’s attention thanks to Swiss-born environmental activist Bruno Manser, who disappeared in the jungle without trace in the year 2000 while campaigning for the Penan cause.

In this book, Wüthrich paints a nuanced portrait of this unique culture. A selection of Penan myths, collected by Ian Mackenzie are published for the first time alongside Wüthirch’s photographs. An essay on Bruno Manser and his mission for the Penans’ case completes the book.

Text in English, German and Penan.

At the peak of the 1968/69 students’ riots at American Universities, Robert Venturi and Denise Scott Brown, together with Steven Izenour, pursued their Design and Research Studio on the topic of Las Vegas at Yale School of Architecture. The results of this were condensed into the book Learning from Las Vegas that became a classic almost instantly upon its first publication in 1972. The treatise excited the 1970s architecture world and has remained influential to architects, teachers and theoreticians to the present day. Some forty years later, Eyes that Saw: Architecture after Las Vegas offers a richly illustrated collection of essays by renowned scholars of art and architectural history, eminent architects, and artists, investigating Learning from Las Vegas and its heritage from various perspectives. Each chapter builds on the knowledge of the radical influence it had on architecture and urban design, visual art, and even on history more generally. Published alongside are documents from the Venturi, Scott Brown & Associates Archive at the University of Pennsylvania, as well as an illustrated chronology of the resonance in international media following the publication of Learning from Las Vegas in 1972. Contributors include: Stan Allen, Eve Blau, Beatriz Colomina, Valéry Didelon, Elizabeth Diller, Peter Fischli, Dan Graham, Neil Levine, Mary McLeod, Rafael Moneo, Stanislaus von Moos, Katherine Smith, Martino Stierli, Karin Theunissen, Robert Venturi, and Denise Scott Brown.

“Most photographers have a style and a favourite subject, but few are as synonymous with their chosen field as Anouk Krantz, who is known for her spectacular – and immensely popular – black & white studies of cowboy culture.” — Black & White Photography Magazine

“Incredible photos capture modern-day cowboys throughout the USA and South America and reveal ‘humanity at its best’.” — Daily Mail

“…fascinating and expansive photo project on the many manifestations of cowboy culture, encompassing the North American cowboy that’s forever enshrined in popular culture, the Central American ‘vaquero’ and the South American ‘gaucho.’” — Amateur Photographer Magazine

“…a stunning photographic journey uncovering a hidden world of modern cowboy culture.” — Cultural Union

In Anouk Masson Krantz’s most expansive work to date, she travels tens of thousands of miles across the Americas, broadening her focus from the United States to both American continents. In her exquisite, large-scale photographs – all new for this book – Anouk captures sweeping landscapes and paints an intimate portrait of the enduring cross-boundary legacies of the North American cowboy, Central American vaquero, and South American gaucho. Her time spent at ranches and rodeos across The Americas has culminated in a magnificent book honouring a way of life many around the world dream of but rarely have experienced first-hand. Frontier builds upon Anouk’s renowned body of work with her bestselling Wild Horses of Cumberland Island (2017); West: The American Cowboy (2019); American Cowboys (2021); and Ranchland (2022). Her stunning black and white, large-scale photographs capture a culture deeply rooted in principled, timeless values, sacrifice, strength, and self-reliance. From stunning panoramas to the intimate everyday lives of working cowboys and their families, Frontier is a must-have addition to her impressive body of work.

Bernie Taupin, Oscar winner, Rock & Roll Hall of Fame inductee, and long-time song-writing collaborator with Elton John, has contributed an exceptional foreword.

“There’s an honesty and integrity in these images that parlays all the elements of what it means to exist outside the boundaries of conformity and confinement. The rebel spirit, the rugged individualism, and the absolute unapologetic rhythm of history. This is stunning work—a true testament to the men and women who are the anvil on which America’s backbone was forged.” —Bernie Taupin

Investigations by Sara Penco stem from the insightful finding of the absence of a key figure in the Sistine Chapel’s Last Judgement fresco. Prior to this illuminating research, Mary Magdalene was not unequivocally identified within Michelangelo’s masterpiece. Father Pfeiffer, with whom Penco establishes an inescapable dialectic, had already hypothesised the presence of Mary Magdalene in the fresco, but it is the scholar, for the first time in these pages, who convincingly justifies her identification. Mary Magdalene is closely connected to the salient episodes in the life of Jesus. The author rightly wonders, therefore, how it is possible that a figure so central to the biblical narrative and the Christian imagination could have been excluded from the depiction of the Parousia. This observation gives rise to an accurate reflection on the iconography of the saint and the Judgement, in relation to the sacred texts and in relation to Michelangelo’s poetics and production. Sara Penco traces Mary Magdalene in the tangle of figures on the wall behind the altar of the Sistine Chapel, contributing to characterise the fresco – one of the best known and most appreciated works in the world – with an unprecedented theological message.

Text in English and Italian.

Sonja Sekula (1918-63) was born and educated in Lucerne, but emigrated to the United States in 1936 together with her family. In 1941, she began studying art at the Arts Students League in New York and made the acquaintance of André Breton and his friends among the surrealists. Her automatic paintings and texts soon captured the interest of Peggy Guggenheim and Marcel Duchamp, and in 1943 she was invited to show her work at Guggenheim’s Art of This Century Gallery. In the late 1940s Betty Parsons Gallery featured Sekula’s paintings in a number of group and solo exhibitions. Mental health problems dogged her throughout her life and forced her to return to Switzerland, where she committed suicide in 1963.

This book provides a comprehensive overview of Sekula’s art in context of the work of her friends and fellow artists from the period. Richly illustrated, it offers a chance to rediscover an immensely talented artist who has been unjustly neglected.

Aerial photography had a special place in the business of the legendary former Swiss airline Swissair. Walter Mittelholzer (1894-1937), aviation pioneer and one of Swissair’s founders, trained as a photographer before turning to aviation. The airline had a specialised subsidiary, Swissair Photo AG, producing well over 100,000 pictures between 1931-2001, when Swissair ceased operations, and still exists as an independent enterprise, BSF Swissphoto. The photographs show landscapes, towns and villages, and mountains, but also industrial plants, infrastructures, and individual buildings in Switzerland and abroad. Swissair – Aerial Photography features around 300 striking, beautiful and informative images, revealing changes in landscape and settlements over nearly a century. It is also an inventory of lost elements making a landscape, untamed rivers, orchards, receding glaciers or vanished historical buildings that shows how an idyllic agricultural country turned into one of the most densely inhabited places over a few decades. With an introductory essay that explores the content of the collection now held at ETH Bibliothek and what can be read from these images today, Swissair – Aerial Photography provides an illuminating look at the history of aerial photography in Switzerland. Text in English and German.

Le Corbusier (1887-1965) is one the most influential architects of the 20th century. In the Scandinavian countries, his influence is arguably most pronounced in the writings and art of the Danish experimentalist Asger Jorn (1914-1973). Their collaboration on Le Corbusier’s pavilion for the 1937 Paris World Exhibition sparked Jorn’s lifelong fascination with the great architect and with architecture more broadly as an inherently public form of art. At the same time, Le Corbusier began revealing his work in visual art and started to move from a rational, technological approach towards a more poetic, materialist approach to architecture. Published in collaboration with the Museum Jorn, Silkeborg, What Moves Us? focuses specifically on the reception of Le Corbusier in Scandinavia, with the relationship between Jorn and Le Corbusier as a thematic thread. The book first highlights the architect’s change of direction and subsequently takes readers through his influence on the young artist. The book’s distinguished contributors explore the relationships that emerged among their artistic theories and practices, including Jorn’s later critique of Le Corbusier. Essays also explore the wider influence of Le Corbusier on Scandinavian architecture and urbanisation and consider Le Corbusier alongside the Danish architect Jørn Oberg Utzon and the Aarhus Brutalism movement.