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Book Nook Up Close: Inside The Pages Of “This Is Where We Live”

This Is Where We Live: Illustrated Stories of Place and Space edited by Antonis Antoniou | gestalten

Forget square footage and gentrified clichés — our digital age has left our language for the places we inhabit feeling, well, dry as dust. This Is Where We Live: Illustrated Stories of Place and Space is the glorious, technicolor antidote: a grand compendium of illustrators who are hijacking the language of architecture, film, and cartography to inject pure, mind-bending fantasy back into our everyday reality.

Alejandro Carsillo Vinci, “Living Structures'”

Alejandro Carsillo Vinci, “Living Structures'”

(Left) Sander Patelski, “Composition No. 27”. (Right) Olivia Bober, “2019/2020”

(Left) Sander Patelski, “Composition No. 27”. (Right) Olivia Bober, “2019/2020”

In an era of endless scrolling and digital fatigue, This Is Where We Live offers a revolutionary escape: a beautifully drawn argument that reclaiming our spatial imagination is the key to reinventing our world. From the graphic, collage-like realism of Don Mak to the fantastical volumetric worlds of Ugo Gattoni, this new title shows how illustrators translate, frame, and reimagine cultural, social, and mental space through new eyes. It is a celebration of art that invites us to reexamine our own relationships with our surroundings, encouraging a more critical and curious spirit.

(Left) Javi Aznarez, “The Parisianer”. (Right) Xinmei Liu, “Cityscapes”

(Left) Javi Aznarez, “The Parisianer”. (Right) Xinmei Liu, “Cityscapes”

Micha Huigen, “Pieces of a New World”

Micha Huigen, “Pieces of a New World”

Boryana Ilieva is a masterful visual archivist who reconstructs famous filmic sets into vivid, perspectival floor plans in her Floor Plan Croissant project, revealing cinematic spaces as crucial architectural artifacts. Ugo Gattoni is an inventor of elaborate, hybrid universes whose designs for the Paris 2024 Olympic posters reshuffled Paris’s monumental architecture into a stadium defying all geographic and spatial logic. Prepare to look at your city, your home, and your imagination with a critical, curious spirit!

Publish date: April 28, 2026

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