A poster about mountain housing and production facilities for shepherds and animals in Italy.

2026 has been declared the International Year of Pastures and Pastoralists by the United Nations General Assembly. In celebration, the Forte di Bard Association organised an international poster contest around the theme of alpine pastures and shepherds. My contribution wasn’t selected, but I still wanted to share the outcome, as I particularly enjoyed the process.

The poster features 20 drawings of rural buildings scattered throughout the Italian mountains, each representing a different region and showcasing a form of vernacular architecture traditionally used by shepherds and local communities. Some of these structures are still in use today, while others have been abandoned, forgotten, or dismantled over time. Many can still be encountered along hiking trails and within historic villages.

Beneath each illustration, a title and a brief description provide context, including the building’s estimated date of origin, its traditional function, and the materials used in its construction.

The work was inspired by an architecture exhibition held as part of the 6th Milan Triennale in 1936, where Giuseppe Pagano and Guarniero Daniel investigated the aesthetic and functionality of Italian rural houses. 

While the exhibition focused on housing, my goal was to create an architectural taxonomy of mountain structures that historically provided both shelter and spaces for work. From my research, studies of this kind tend to focus either on a single building typology or on a specific geographical region. Moreover, much of the knowledge surrounding these vernacular structures remains undocumented. Many of the references and images I gathered were found through local blogs and social media posts shared by hikers and residents.​​​​​​​

Most of these structures are poorly documented, making it difficult to find reliable images online. Given the considerable variations in size, materials, and form, I chose a sketch-based illustration style to establish visual consistency across the series.

As I am not a trained illustrator, I decided to experiment with AI tools to generate images of the buildings while maintaining consistent style and viewpoint.

Using AI was particularly helpful to construct an initial set of drawings that could later be refined. Producing them all twenty illustrations manually would have required a significant amount of time.

Once the images were generated, I retraced them in Illustrator (with the dedicated functionality), fixing AI slop and simplifying the composition when there were excessive details. 

A second, more didactic version of the poster could have connected each of the twenty Italian regions directly to its corresponding architectural structure, making the geographical relationship between place and building type more explicit.