The first of its kind, the Shenzhen Architectural Guide is dedicated to the city’s architecture and conceived as an atlas. The pages inside are filled with more than 150 relevant buildings and places that constitute the physical palimpsest of modern China’s most famous foundational town. Founded in 1978 as one of the first Special Economic Zones under Deng Xiaoping’s reforms, Shenzhen is a young city that was essentially built from the ground up at a rapid pace – hence the infamous ‘Shenzhen Speed’. Unlike most places, it has built its fortune on being propelled into the future without any connection to the past. Shenzhen is a place where business, immigration, ports, borders, and nature come together to shape a unique and, at times, mystifying architectural experience. This guide will introduce the reader to Shenzhen’s kaleidoscopic architecture with the help of bilingual coordinates and geodata. It will also refer to the city's political history and cultural geography. By photographing these state-of-the-art works in 2020, the book captures a sort of 'here-and-now' that will soon be transformed once again.

Domenica Bona is an Italian PhD architect with a variegated experience in design and research. After graduating from Domenica Polytechnic of Milan, she studied in Shenzhen and Rome. Recognised with the INU Award in 2018, her doctoral thesis investigates the concept of 'Chinese-ness' in contemporary Chinese cities’ images. She is currently a lecturer at TU Berlin’s China Centre where she teaches architecture and urban history in contemporary China.