Italian Journeys / Viaggi in Italia collects thirteen years of Jonathan Sergison's writing on post-war Italian architecture — lectures, course notes, and critical essays shaped by sustained first-hand engagement with buildings across the country.
About This Book
Written between 2012 and 2025, this collection traces Sergison's evolving relationship with Italy's built environment through a disciplined methodology: looking before theorising. The texts — many originating as lectures and course notes — resist abstraction in favour of close observation, arguing that architectural design finds its deepest grounding in the careful study of what already exists. For practitioners and students grappling with how precedent informs contemporary design, this is a model of architectural thinking developed through direct, repeated encounter with Italian post-war architecture rather than from a distance.
Key Features
- 276 pages of critical essays, adapted lectures, and course notes on Italian post-war architecture
- Written by Jonathan Sergison, with texts drawn from his teaching at the Accademia di Architettura in Mendrisio
- Published by Thymos Books, 2025
What You'll Discover
- How sustained, repeated exposure to buildings — rather than archival research alone — forms the basis of Sergison's critical method
- The argument that architectural design must be rooted in detailed observation of the existing built fabric
- The intellectual relationship between teaching practice and design thinking, as lectures become a vehicle for architectural inquiry
- A situated perspective on post-war Italian architecture developed through proximity — Sergison's position at Mendrisio, just across the Swiss border, informing a decades-long engagement
About the Author
Jonathan Sergison is an architect and educator who teaches at the Accademia di Architettura in Mendrisio. His proximity to Italy has informed a sustained critical engagement with the country's post-war architectural culture, developed through teaching and repeated site visits over many years.
Specifications
- Format: Paperback
- Pages: 276
- Dimensions: 22 x 15.5 cm
- Language: English
- ISBN: 9788832072679
- Publisher: Thymos Books
- Publication Date: 2025
Perfect For: Architects and students interested in post-war Italian architecture, design educators exploring observation-based pedagogies, and practitioners drawn to the relationship between critical writing and design practice.