Fight Out City Rivalries on the Chess Board With These Architectural Sets

There's never been a better time to show off your hometown pride. As the design critics at Co.Design recently pointed out, “infrastructure is now a lifestyle trend.” You can celebrate your favorite city through posters, jewelry, glassware, or now, chess sets. San Diego-based designer Abe Ruiz 3D-prints chess pieces that resemble the iconic skyscrapers of particular cities, Gizmodo reports.

Each set is carefully designed to evoke the specific urban skyline of the city, while also being recognizable as the intended game pieceS. The Chicago set, for instance, uses the Willis Tower (formerly the Sears Tower) as its king, while the city’s second-tallest building, the John Hancock Tower, is the queen. The pawns are in the shape of Bertrand Goldberg’s Prentice Women’s Hospital, an architectural treasure that was demolished in 2014.

The pieces are sold in half-sets, so you choose whether you want to buy, for instance, the Chicago pieces in white and the San Diego pieces in black, or a full set of just Chicago pieces. The pieces have a small magnet at the bottom to give them extra stability on the wood-and-metal board. The boards, sold separately, are overlaid with city street maps, but you can also use the pieces on any other metal board if you aren’t dedicated to battling it out for urban domination.

There are sets for Chicago, Dallas, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Seattle, and San Diego, with corresponding map boards. All of them are available on Etsy or on Ruiz’s website. They start at $96.

[h/t Gizmodo]

All images courtesy Abe Ruiz Design.

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