Cannero Walking Tales wins the 2025 Design Intelligence Award

The project Cannero Walking Tales, developed by the agency Dotdotdot for the Castelli di Cannero, has won the Gold Award - Design Intelligence Award (DIA) 2025 from the China Academy of Art, in the category Cultural Innovation. The DIA is considered the foremost international academic award for design and innovation in China. Established ten years ago, the DIA recognises design practices capable of shaping culture and society, acting as a spokesperson for global creativity towards an increasingly intelligent and sustainable.

The innovative scope of Cannero Walking Tales goes beyond the concept of an audio guide: it is an open-air museum experience set among the ruins of the Castelli di Cannero, the 15th-century fortress on Lake Maggiore which is part of the Terre Borromeo. A spatial narrative comes to life as visitors move through the spaces along the site’s visitor route, opened to the public for the first time in June 2025 following an ambitious restoration led by architect Salvatore Simonetti.

Like a living audiobook, thanks to invisible beacon devices that communicate via Bluetooth, the stories start automatically, with no need for screens or gestures. Sound, architecture and movement align in a single choreography. In the Mastio tower, historical episodes emerge directly from the walls through the video mapping, as if the fortress itself were speaking.

Carved into the stones of Castelli di Cannero is a centuries-old inscription that asks, in the first person: “What if architecture could speak? What stories would it tell?”. From this question came the concept by DotDotDot: using technology to give voice to ancient stones and let them whisper, suggest and engage visitors emotionally, rather than explaining things in the traditional way.

The fortress thus becomes a living archive of layered stories, where place, time and narrative unfold together. Visitors’ imagination is also sparked by augmented-reality stations, interactive installations and immersive projections. For younger visitors, a treasure hunt leads the way with rhyming clues and playful riddles, uncovering stories from the period.

The technology is lightweight, discreet and non-invasive: it integrates naturally into the landscape, in line with the conservation-minded approach chosen by the Borromeo family and the Simonetti studio, which preserved the ruins in their unspoilt beauty, as authentic witnesses to history.