Italy Cross Sections of a Country

The research represented in this book, conducted in 1996 by Gabriele Basilico (photographs) and Stefano Boeri (text), studies the haphazard, significant changes that have taken place over the last twenty years in the Italian landscape. It is not so much the large buildings, the new districts or new infrastructures that have changed the face of the land. It is rather the multitude of solitary, agglomerated buildings, such as the single-family homes, storehouses, shopping centers, office buildings, sheds, and workshops. They are modest constructions, often incongruously clustered one next to the other, scattered incoherently across the landscape, and they give expression to small fragments of our society and economy: families, small businesses, distributors, stores, clubs, depots.