lu has arrived!

It’s called lu – or rather: lu, the city in one hundred pages – and it is the new magazine dedicated to Lugano, produced by the City’s Office of Communication and Marketing. It is a print publication born from digital media, from the desire to give a longer life to the many topics that find space every day on the City’s digital channels, in particular on @luganomycity: portraits, interviews, reportage, stories from the past and the present with Lugano at their centre. Some of this content is developed and adapted for the printed page, offering a more in-depth yet more leisurely reading experience. Each issue of lu also features original content, written by the editorial team or by external contributors, which is then taken up online, closing a virtuous circle between print and digital.

lu is deliberately irregular: because it does not follow a fixed schedule – it is published every 6, 8, perhaps 12 months, the time needed to gather “one hundred pages” of stories – and because it has an unusual distribution. The first 5,000 copies are available free of charge at Palazzo Civico, at the Foce, at LAC, at Puntocittà offices, as well as in many bars, venues and local shops throughout the city.

Each issue of the magazine revolves around a central theme that all contributions gravitate towards. The first is the invisible: those places, people or perspectives of Lugano that we often ignore or overlook, yet which help define the city’s identity. Page after page, we step into the intimacy of several Lugano homes; into spaces that were once lively and are now closed to the public; into an osteria outside the city centre that is a small microcosm of great humanity. We peer into the invisible thoughts of a robot and of an American journalist, into the silent friendship between a poet and a tree. Guided by a DJ, an ornithologist, a film director and a fountain maintenance worker, we cross the darkness of the city at night and then venture underground, where the dead lie and unsuspected temples of water are hidden. In the company of an urban planner, a shopkeeper, a bookseller, a tailor and a knife grinder, we discuss local neighbourhood commerce.

Many voices bring the first issue of lu to life. In addition to the people interviewed, contributions are signed by the poet Fabio Pusterla, the film director Klaudia Reynicke, the AI specialist Luca Gambardella and the journalist Alan Friedman. A great deal of space is given to images, with photographs by Paolo Abate, Jacqueline Haener, Vanni Moretti, Igor Ponti, Alfio Tommasini and Alessandro Ruffini. The cover photograph, produced exclusively for lu, is by Nicolas Polli.

To reach the many people who experience Lugano in other languages (and also to introduce the city beyond its borders), a large part of the content is translated into English.

The magazine lu is a project of the City of Lugano’s Office of Communication and Marketing.

Editor in charge: Jan Trautmann. Editorial project: Eleonora Bourgoin and Magda Mandelli. Graphic design: Studio CCRZ.

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