Seven dreamlike architectures accompany the reader through the course of the saga by J.K. Rowling
Since being first published, from 1997 to 2007, the literary saga by J.K. Rowling changed covers many times. Now, Harry Potter is back with a new all-Italian look. This new edition sees the collaboration between the Salani publishing house and the famous Italian architect and designer Michele De Lucchi. For this project, the designer of some of the most iconic buildings in Milan joined forces with his studio AMDL CIRCLE and the Portuguese digital artist Andreas Rocha. Each one of the seven volumes sports on the new cover a dreamlike architecture located within epic and evocative scenarios. The concept also plays with light caught at various times of day, changing from the first to the last book. In the same way, the covers aim to narrate and accompany the reader gradually through the course of the story.
“The resulting settings are intended to create a bridge between the collective imagination about Harry Potter and the imagination of each of us”
Mariagrazia Mazzitelli, Salani’s Editorial Director, said: “Many and varied, many beautiful, are the covers of the Harry Potter saga. What was still missing, however, was a graphic project created by an artist, an architect and a designer who would represent us internationally, an excellence of ‘Made in Italy.’ Salani identified the visionary Michele De Lucchi: there is something ‘Potterian’ in the character, in the studio he directs, just look at his website. Our proposal was greeted with immediate enthusiasm and, right from the first meeting, the architect had a clear idea of how to create the covers. We worked with absolute harmony, putting together two teams – Salani and the AMDL CIRCLE studio – as if we were creating a building, using natural elements such as wood, landscape, color, and light to amplify the reader’s imagination and the imagery of Harry Potter. Because the saga itself is nothing but an exemplary architecture of words where everything holds together.”
De Lucchi commented: “Fantasy feeds fantasy. Visions feed visions. All our imagination is a process of transformation, a becoming that feeds on other visions that are consonant and not necessarily coherent. In the design of the Harry Potter covers, with my studio AMDL CIRCLE we have included iconic elements of our architectural research to amplify the reader’s imagination and the iconography of the saga through scenarios never seen before, placing the fantasy genre in dialogue with contemporary architecture. The resulting settings are intended to create a bridge between the collective imagination about Harry Potter and the imagination of each of us. It was great to animate our buildings with J.K. Rowling’s fantastic stories because new imaginary landscapes were born from the interweaving.”