Now Here: Unpacking the Hybridity of Latin American Food Products in Basel
(2026)

“Now Here: Unpacking the Hybridity of Latin American Food Products in Basel” is a design research project that explores the hybrid cultural spaces embodied in five Latin American migrant-owned food and beverage businesses in Basel, Switzerland. Through the analysis of visual narratives in packaging—alongside interviews, drawings, and written reflections—the project examines how design shapes adaptation, translation, and meaning with products and people within a foreign context. The research unpacks how these places go beyond commerce to foster community, articulating a fluid notion of home that exists between “here” and “there,” forming a third, hybrid space.
Using a multimodal methodology that blends ethnographic fieldwork—including interviews, participant observation, and visual documentation—with graphic storytelling and design research, this work reflects on nostalgia, transformation, and identity. It explores how places and their products serve as containers of memory and belonging, and how migration reshapes one’s sense of self and place. This publication functions as both a personal and collective archive—a story of grief, resilience, and creative survival in the in-between.