The Unusual Zürich: a journey beyond the expected

03.10.2026

This week, we presented The Unusual Zürich in Barcelona, our new editorial project commissioned by Zürich Tourism and developed by CC/magazine and CC/studio. To celebrate, we conceived a journey to the Swiss city through photography, design and gastronomy.

Cities, like people, have many layers. To get to know Zürich, we gave it time, explored its neighbourhoods, spoke to the people who live there and returned. With each visit, we discovered something that made us reconsider our perception of the city. Its relationship with art, the quality of its architecture and a food scene that surprised us changed the way we saw it and gave us reasons to return.

We created an experience that brought guests closer to Zürich through photographs, flavours and objects connected to its creative culture.

Those trips gave rise to The Unusual Zürich, a digital guide for curious minds that we presented on 30 September at La Culture House in Barcelona. At CC/studio, we created an experience that introduced guests to the Swiss city through photographs, flavours and objects connected to its creative culture. In doing so, we shared a discovery that, after months of work, we had brought to life in the pages of the publication.

The Unusual Zürich, a guide to looking beyond

Our collaboration with Zürich Tourism grew out of our work on The Unusual Barcelona and The Unusual Madrid, the publications through which we have spent years exploring how to tell a city’s story from a personal perspective. For this new project, we brought together creative direction, editorial work and photography through CC/studio and CC/magazine.

We travelled to Zürich several times, explored its neighbourhoods and took time to visit places, have conversations and compare impressions. Returning allowed us to recognise connections we had missed on our first visit and delve deeper into the places and projects that interested us most.

The result is a Spanish-language digital publication that combines a travel guide and a magazine. Inside, you will find a selection of restaurants, cafés, bars, nightlife venues, shops, museums, art galleries and hotels. Alongside these addresses, we have included features, local projects and recommendations from people who live in the city, as well as a two-day itinerary and an annual calendar of events.

The Unusual Zürich is a Spanish-language digital publication that combines a travel guide and a magazine.

We also paid particular attention to the design, combining typography, photography and colour to give the pages rhythm and connect the different sections. And we created a Spotify playlist to accompany the journey.

Design, architecture and local voices

In our features, we explored three subjects that helped us understand Zürich’s creative influence: with FREITAG, the Swiss brand that transforms used truck tarpaulins into unique bags and accessories, we examined circularity through materials, repair and the lifespan of objects; we turned to ETH Zürich, the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zürich, an internationally renowned university for science, technology and architecture, to discuss the future of architecture and the role of research; and finally, we devoted a feature to Helvetica, one of the defining typefaces of modern graphic design, to explore Swiss typographic culture and its impact on the way we read the world.

In the Made in Zürich section, we brought together projects that are part of everyday life, from Favorit perfumes, ViCAFE coffee and chocolates by Laflor and Garçoa to QWSTION, a brand designing functional, durable bags and backpacks with research into plant-based materials at the heart of its approach, and Soeder, a local brand producing natural personal care products in its own Swiss factory, with a commitment to refillable packaging.

For Top Picks, four remarkable women shared their favourite places: Charlotte von Stotzingen, co-founder and director of Zürich Art Weekend; Cheyenne Kunz, Director of Marketing, Sales and Events at Urban Surf Zürich; Mia Vadasz, co-founder of Pelikamo; and Zizi Hattab, chef and founder of KLE, DAR and COR. Their recommendations brought together personal routes through cafés, restaurants, cultural spaces and places they visit to unwind.

Charlotte recommended the Kronenhalle Bar and a swim at the Frauenbad Stadthausquai, the historic women-only bathing facility on the River Limmat that becomes Barfussbar, an open-air bar welcoming everyone, in the evening. Mianamed the Pavillon Le Corbusier and the Kunsthaus among her sources of inspiration, while Zizi chose the lake as her retreat. Their contributions allowed us to include different ways of experiencing Zürich.

The Zürich that brought us back

That relationship between culture and everyday life was one of our greatest surprises. As we explored Zürich, we discovered how its historic heritage sits alongside contemporary architecture and how design is present even in a sign, a shop or an everyday object. Moving from one neighbourhood to another, we also encountered very different rhythms and atmospheres. All of this changed our perception of the city, and with each visit we found new reasons to fall in love with it.

Water was another aspect of Zürich that fascinated us. In summer, the city’s rhythm changes and the river and lake become the focus of everyday life: people gather to swim, have a drink, chat or linger by the water into the evening.

At the Badis, the city’s bathing spots, we discovered an incredible atmosphere and an enthusiasm for enjoying the warm weather that made us want to join in and stay a little longer.

This way of spending the summer won us over, and we wanted to give it a prominent place in the guide to share everything it made us feel.

From Zurich to La Culture House

To present the guide, we wanted to give that journey a physical form. At CC/studio, we chose La Culture House, in Casa Francesc de Paula Vallet, an early 20th-century Modernista building in Barcelona’s Eixample district.

We were looking for a space with character that would allow us to create a journey through Zürich. Its two distinct spaces enabled us to connect the photography exhibition with the gastronomic experience, while the building’s architecture brought Barcelona into conversation with a publication in which places and their stories play a fundamental role.

We organised an exhibition of photographs by Ely Sánchez, photographer and Art Director at CC/magazine, taken during our trips to Zürich. His artistic eye and cinematic sensibility bring a particular attention to light, framing and the atmosphere of each place, offering a deeply personal perspective on the city.

By bringing his images beyond the pages of the guide, we wanted to give that perspective room to unfold, allowing guests to linger over the details, discover different viewpoints and share in what had surprised us during our visits.

At the entrance, we also placed a vintage display stand with postcards and FREITAG luggage tags containing a QR code linking directly to the download of The Unusual Zürich, so guests could save the guide to their phones and start planning their trip.

We organised an exhibition of photographs by Ely Sánchez, taken during our travels.

A city on the table

We also wanted to give food a prominent role, as it had been one of the great surprises of our trips to Zürich. The variety of restaurants and the calibre of their offerings revealed a first-class culinary destination, and we felt it was essential to share that with our guests.

We therefore worked with Jil Zander to create an experience inspired by the city, allowing guests to get to know it through its flavours too.

To achieve this, we translated the visual identity of The Unusual Zürich into a blue table with small wooden bases in the publication’s colours, created for the occasion, on which the different bites were presented individually.

The arrangement invited guests to approach, observe and choose, giving food a central place in the event and highlighting gastronomy as one of Zürich’s defining characteristics.

The menu brought together Swiss references, fresh preparations and combinations of familiar ingredients, including Tête de Moine rosettes, small Gruyère tartlets with apple and potato, and cubes of rye bread with Zürich honey.

We presented the sweets in personalised metal tins containing Tirggel — traditional thin, crisp Zürich biscuits made with honey, flour and spices — and Hüppen, rolled wafers filled with chocolate cream, introducing guests to more local flavours and textures.

The variety of restaurants and the calibre of their offerings revealed a first-class culinary destination.

We wanted aesthetics and gastronomy to go hand in hand, with the same attention to design and typography that we devoted to the publication.

We thus considered every detail, from the bases for the bites to the tins and menus, so that the gastronomic experience would become part of the visual world of The Unusual Zürich.

A keepsake to continue the journey

We also wanted to introduce guests to Favorit, the Swiss perfume brand featured in Made in Zürich, and give each of them a fragrance to take home.

It was a particular pleasure to share a project we had discovered while preparing the publication and give it a place in an afternoon when photography, food and design brought us closer to the city.

The Barcelona launch was a very special moment for us, as we could finally share a project we had spent months working on and see guests discover the photographs, browse the guide and talk about Zürich.

Everything that had excited us during our travels found a new audience that afternoon.

With The Unusual Zürich, we hope to inspire that same desire to get to know the city: for our recommendations to encourage you to explore its neighbourhoods, book a table, step into a museum or spend an afternoon by the water.