Join the author, architect and teacher Christopher Pizzi, along an informal tour through the evolution of the California landscape from Mission towns to modern cities and suburbs.

This book’s collection of watercolors and sketches is an illustrated inquiry into the character and relationship of places, and the journey of artistic ideas over time.

With the historic Mission Town as a point of departure, the author starts with wondrous San Francisco, his hometown for the last 15 years. The geography expands outward to the Bay Area, along California’s Mission Trail, into the State’s Central Valley, and beyond.

Using drawing as a method of research and interpretive seeing, the author makes connections across time and space, and challenges us to look again at our own built environment, and reconsider how the character of its place relates to the wider world.