The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) recently added three castles, a defensive wall, and ramparts of the town of Bellinzone, Switzerland, to the World Heritage List, a project that seeks to identify, protect and preserve cultural and natural heritage around the world considered to be of outstanding value to humanity.

To celebration the inclusion of its town in the UNESCO list, the city of Bellinzona invited the artist Felice Varini to hold one of his land-art events at the town’s historic castle, which dates back to the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. The city then asked four photographers to record Varini’s work, which consisted of draping a very long swath of red material over the castle. The design decision was to echo the long red strip, as nearly as possible, in the design of the book. Closed, the book offers no clue to its unusual design; opened and unfolded, the book is revealed as a single page, about 42 feet long, that has been folded into 75 nearly square pages, including the cover, which wraps around the text. Moreover, the book is two sided, one containing the work of the four photographers who documented the Varini installation, the other including all of the text in four languages. The book can either be viewed as an exhibition or read, depending on which side is chosen.

“I adore this book. It is really more of an object than a read, and fully explores the form’s sculptural potential.” Cheryl Towler Weese
“The content is translated into a simple, straight and generously designed panorama.” Lars Müller