Some Reasons for Travelling to Italy reframes the grand tour as a personal architectural inquiry, presenting Peter Wilson's idiosyncratic case for Italy through an eclectic series of reasons rather than a conventional itinerary.
About This Book
Part sketchbook, part cultural meditation, Some Reasons for Travelling to Italy resists the tidy logic of the travel guide. Architect Peter Wilson draws on a lifetime of engagement with Italian cities to construct an argument for the country that runs deeper than its obvious attractions. Published to accompany a 2016 exhibition at the AA School of Architecture in London, the book takes the form of a latter-day Baedeker — but one driven by architectural imagination rather than pragmatic itinerary. Wilson's own drawings and watercolours carry much of the meaning here, making this as much a work of visual thinking as written reflection. For architects and designers attuned to Italy's role in shaping the discipline's cultural mythology, this is a rare personal document.
Key Features
- 160 pages of Wilson's original drawings and watercolours alongside written reflections on Italian architectural culture
- Author: Peter Wilson
- Produced to accompany an exhibition of the same title at the AA School, 2016
- Published by AA Publications, 2016
What You'll Discover
- How an architect's sustained relationship with Italian cities produces insight that tourism and scholarship separately cannot
- The grand tour reconsidered — not as a rite of passage but as a framework for understanding Italy's architectural habitat and cultural mythology
- Wilson's original watercolours and drawings as a mode of architectural analysis, not mere illustration
- An eclectic, avowedly personal set of reasons to engage with Italy that challenge the received canon of must-see sites
About the Author
Peter Wilson is an architect for whom Italian cities have served as sustained professional and intellectual reference points throughout his career. His engagement with Italy informs both his built work and the idiosyncratic visual thinking on display throughout this book.
Specifications
- Format: Paperback
- Pages: 160
- Dimensions: 193 x 142 mm
- Language: English
- ISBN: 9781907896781
- Publisher: AA Publications
- Publication Date: 2016
Perfect For: Architects and designers with a serious interest in Italian architectural culture, readers drawn to the tradition of the grand tour, and anyone who responds to drawing and watercolour as instruments of spatial thinking.