ARCH+ | Blog 1/2017 | Leo Herrmann

For several weeks, I worked hard on the special issue "At the end: Architecture – 50 years of ARCH+" that was published on the 50th anniversary of the founding of ARCH+ The issue focuses on an exhibition and a conference at the architecture centre in Vienna, which dealt with the discourses and practices of the past five decades and was supervised academically by Anh-Linh Ngo, the co-publisher of ARCH+.

Graphic designers from the Cologne-based office Meiré & Meiré further processed the pre-layouts – the so-called "scribbles" – that I had created over the past weeks and set the final version. Since the issue is laid out as a review of 50 years of discursive practice in architecture and examines completely different styles, epochs and discourses, the graphic design of this edition accommodates this diversity and works with different typefaces and illustrations that represent the different decades. It was impressive to observe how texts and images supplemented each other in the completed layouts, and how that changed my perspective of texts that I had previously only known as dry Word files. I think that this type of quality can still only be achieved by print publications that are put together with as much care and effort as ARCH+.

The issue came together piece by piece. Naturally, some problems arose as the files were finalised – a few images had to be researched anew, copyrights had to be resolved or quotes verified. In addition, a few short texts for different parts of the issue were still missing: Society, material, theory, history and legal matters. I was able to participate in drafting the chapter introduction from the perspective of the history of ARCH+. The research for this task consisted of reading relevant back issues on the respective topic. It was interesting to distil a certain ARCH+ viewpoint on these topics, and my work provided me with a real insight into the magazine's way of thinking. A conversation on 50 years of ARCH+ between Anh-Linh Ngo and Nikolaus Kuhnert was particularly insightful. I carefully read the transcript of this interview. A much-abbreviated version of the 9-hour conversation can be found in issue 229 – it is definitely one of my favourite articles in that edition.

About Leo Herrmann

Leo Herrmann is a Sto Foundation and ARCH+ association scholar. In his own projects and interventions in the public space, Leo explored the possibilities of an alternative and critical production of space.