Working together with architect Alberto Alessi, Zürich, Gassner-Redolfi develops a permanent exhibition in an exhibition space measuring 400 m² in the new administration building of the international timber construction company RUBENS in Kiens, South Tyrol. With the title “Holzperspektiven” (Wood Perspectives) the exhibition tells about the forest, trees and buildings, makes the physical and haptic qualities of wood tangible, and demonstrates the importance of this material for the culture of building, in earlier times and today, both regionally and internationally. The exhibition is a reminiscence of the phenomenon wood, a haptic, spatial narrative about wood, starting from its source as a raw material and extending to different perspectives on how the material can be utilised. This is not a product exhibition but a wood exhibition. It is about the passion for wood which is clearly evident in the RUBNER business and which the exhibition aims to convey.

Since November 2011 the Vorarlberger Architektur Institut – known in short as vai – has been responsible for the project selection and editorial design of the cover series for the “Leben & Wohnen”supplement to the Vorarlberger Nachrichten newspaper. The concept of a media cooperative, which Reinhard Gassner helped to develop, is new. The exhibition “Hohe Auflage” is intended to present this remarkable collaboration between vai and VN in an enjoyable, enthusiastic overall show. 33 reports, representing a total of 175 pages on architecture, are detached from the property supplement and a facsimile is made of them on a fifty-metre-long piece of paper. This length of paper is stretched through the exhibition spaces, moves up and down, is twisted in the middle around its own axis, and finally runs out on the floor. Associations with the form of reproduction are awakened by web offset printing on a paper roll, which is standard in massprinting. By lining up the contributions the enormous variety and quality of this reportage is clearly demonstrated. A glossary concludes the series of contributions on the length of printed material web. The selected words from the fields of architecture and mass communications were compiled from various encyclopaedias and dictionaries. A section of a printed image enlarged more than one hundred times serves as a macro view of the reproduction technology. This wall-mounted image, 566 cm wide by 302 cm high, shows the dot matrix of images and the blurred edges of letters. In the special issue “Nur Text” (only text) the architecture stories – just the texts – are combined in a limited edition of 3500, stacked on a pallet for people to take them home with them. A word image the size of a wall makes the 33 headlines of the contributions readable in a new way. The “forced justification” in narrow columns placed beside each other, with exaggerated spacing between the lines, leads you to read horizontally. This typographical faux pas produces poetic lines made up of words and fragments of words apparently arranged at random next to each other.

»Bauen mit Holz – Wege in die Zukunft« (Building with Wood – Paths to the Future) is an exhibition by the architecture museum and the timber building department of the TU Munich that was launched in 2012 in Munich’s Pinakothek der Moderne. Now, in an adapted form, it is presented by proHolz in cooperation with the Künstlerhaus in Munich. The aim of the exhibition is to explain and convey to a wider public the transformation of the building material wood, ignored for so long by modern architecture, into a new source of hope for forward-looking urban building. The information is presented in the form of short texts, plans, photographs or videos on 120 cm wide, vertical strips of silk paper that extend the height of the space. The unbleached, naturally brown strips of paper are combined with models of timber buildings precisely constructed in the TU Munich and give the exhibition its rhythm. Dates and facts are transformed in impressive explanatory graphics. The relationship between the “primal plant tree” and the technical world of planning and building is also a theme of the exhibition logo. An archetypical house is here formed out of the branches of a tree and semantically focuses on the core messages: that wood is a renewable, highly efficient building material and that building with wood is active climate protection. In the publication that accompanies the exhibition well-known specialist authors analyse the ecological significance, technological potential, and new aesthetic of this familiar construction material.

The United Nations declared 2011 the “International Year of Forests”. In response to this the architecture museum and the department of timber construction at the University of Technology in Munich presented an exhibition that dealt with the ecological, technical and design possibilities of this material. The exhibition starts with the forest and reflections on wood as a raw material. Opposite this, five current timber construction projects are presented and their benefits in terms of climate protection are explained. After this 52 selected international examples illustrate new digital finishing methods and illustrate the architectural diversity of modern timber construction: from the low energy house to wide-spanning structure to high-rise buildings. A room made entirely of beech wood completes the exhibition. Rarely encountered in timber construction, this wood is here used most effectively for various building elements that form the floor, ceiling and wall, employing a variety of surface finishes. The chief protagonists are the models of timber buildings made with acribic precision by students from the architecture faculty at the TU Munich (department of timber construction). The stands for the models presented are uniform, delicate frames made of spruce. The information is presented in the form of short texts, plans, photographs or videos on 120-centimetre-wide strips of silk paper extending the height of the room. The unbleached, naturally brown lengths of paper surround the huge rooms and give the exhibition a rhythm. Dates and facts are transformed into impressive explanatory graphics. For example: the amounts of different kinds of wood are translated into a 20-metre long bar diagram that uses pieces of the various woods. An 80-year old spruce tree – from the rootstock to the tree top – lies in the middle of the exhibition space as a scenographic intervention. The 40-metre-long trunk is freed from branches, some of the bark is removed, and it is divided into individual sections with increasingly fine longitudinal cuts. The top of the trunk points towards a 5x5 metre patchwork made up of different wood-based materials. The link between the tree as a primal form of plant and the technical world of planning and building is also a theme of the exhibition logo. An archetypical house is shaped from the branches of a tree and focuses in semantic terms on the core messages: wood is a sustainable, highly efficient building material and building with wood is active climate protection. In the publication accompanying the exhibition nine well-known experts analyse the ecological significance, technological potential and new aesthetics of this familiar material. Bauen mit Holz – Wege in die Zukunft Architecture museum of the TU Munich in the Pinakothek der Moderne 10.11.2011 – 05.02.2012

The design of the exhibition with sculptural models of the buildings and reduced plan graphics is continued in the truest sense of the word by 8 A1-size “poster tear-off blocks“. Here visitors to the exhibition can help themselves. For each of the projects exhibited an iconographic image is chosen that conveys the atmosphere of the respective building in the most striking way. The strong photographs speak for themselves. The header to each poster clearly classifies the particular building depicted and through pictogram-like representations also refers to the other seven buildings in the exhibition.

For the Hafengebäude (harbour building) of the City of Bregenz an effective visual screen for 80 bays of full-height glazing was to be developed that would not impair the transparency of the building envelope. The starting point was provided by the need to interrupt the transparency, every 5 x 5 cm in black and white, with bars 2 cm high, for a certain viewing height. The basis for the concept is provided by band of text in the shape of a rhythmical, graphical system of symbols of an abstract binary basic code; instead of 0/1, black and white are used in the form of a boustrophedon cuneiform script. The text, which deals with the theme of glass and transparency and was written especially for this purpose, remains encrypted. Ultimately, what one sees are apparently randomly varied ornaments and a mysterious pattern. Our lives are increasingly determined by a communication system which essentially consists of two symbols and is generally concealed from us. The concept is based on making this system visible and, with it, the rhythmical structure and order of the text. An extract from the text: “ … comparable to the phenomenon when the reflective surface of the lake, fleetingly moved by wind and waves, acquires this fascinating shimmering quality that meditatively captures the eye and at the same time relaxes it…” Below the full deciphered text: In architectural parlance transparency is primarily associated with glass simply because we can look through it. But from outside, during the day and in the sunshine, large areas of glazing in buildings are never completely transparent. Through the reflection of the sunlight, the way the surroundings are mirrored glass buildings or glazed building parts can seem extremely massive, indeed hermetic, and from certain angles even dark and monolithic. From a distance, due to their reflective quality, they are highly noticeable, radiating space as it were, glittering like crystals. The idea of using digital patterns to break up the aggressive mirroring effect of such glass facades makes sense from a number of perspectives and is helpful in both design and functional terms: the ornament defuses the monolithic brilliance of the facades, giving the eye areas on which it can focus, whereas excessive transparency would create a safety problem in using the building. The crystalline surfaces relax in a pattern that introduces a certain grain, a suggestion of texture. A multi-dimensional layer is placed over the essentially mono-dimensional quality of glass, which creates a visual distraction and in semantic terms adds new layers and effects to the simple reflective aspect. In this way the material, whose surface repels everything, both visually and factually, is given a certain depth. The irritating aspect of the external effect is permeated, visually opened up for contrasting characteristics, more complex layers of meaning. Thanks to the printed pattern the architecturally intended transparency, the visual lightness of the building’s external and internal impact are retained, indeed even strengthened, as the reflective effects are limited, defused so to speak. In the harbour building the concern is the effect of lightness, dematerialisation, ultimately also of glass, which can best be achieved by ornamentation. With a pattern of this kind the glass of the building can relax in a pixel effect, comparable to the phenomenon when the reflective surface of the lake, fleetingly moved by wind and waves, acquires this fascinating shimmering quality that meditatively captures the eye and at the same time relaxes it…”

The aesthetic platform of this image is the contrast between traditional and new means of design. The visual elements are the “F”, the colours r-g-b, as well as the Avenir family of fonts designed by Adrian Frutiger. Using printable paints the “F” is applied directly to the offset plate and printed on large sheets in pastels shades of red, green, and blue, one on top of the other. When trimmed to DIN sizes, this produces lithographs with wonderful pictorial compositions. The “F” appears in some form or other in all publications and documents and, as an airy, transparent landscape of colours and forms, creates the background for overprints in black and white. The F form also serves as raw material for visual essays. The complex corporate design program can be developed further by various users in the institution. Without the need for any elaborate form of graphic design monitoring new applications are produced constantly in various programs and systems

To complement its appealing tourism advertising this town was looking for an image for all its communal forms of communication. Visitors to Lech am Arlberg are struck by the contrast between the gentle contours of the elevated valley and the rugged, soaring and plummeting outlines of the powerful mountains. The “Trinité” family of fonts by Bram de Does reflects something of this atmosphere. The standard form of this typeface is slanted slightly in the direction of reading; the individual letters are shaped with a high formal quality. This results in a sovereign and calm type, easy legibility and gracefulness. The special aspect of this Antiqua is the way the family is expanded to include three different ascenders and descenders. The characteristics of the different fonts are shown in a matrix and allocated to the different areas. This typeface is used for the entire correspondence and communication– ranging from letters written by the mayor to minutes of meetings, the community newsletter or public signposting. The municipal coat-of-arms, which is of heraldic origin, is respectfully integrated as a further principal element of the town’s image.

The business “nu” produces both individual high-tech content-management systems as well as standardised software solutions for special users and branches. This “twin track” quality is taken up in the company’s verbal and visual communication and provides the basis for the design. With the name consisting of only two letters and a logo made from just a single form of letter – in one case standing on its feet, in the other on its head – a striking letter ornament is created: two colours, two letters, two directions. Overlaying these repeatedly produces new forms and colours. The “2” thematically addressed in the design also recalls the binary set of characters of the digital world

Cervantes&Co is a small bookshop that also sells Spanish wine and delicacies. The name is borrowed from the Spanish national poet, Miguel de Cervantes y Saavedra. The emblem blends the letter “C” and the ligature &, which is derived from Latin word “et”, to form a circular ornament. The opulent culinary figure accompanies the bare, functional name in a series of humorous insertions – as a stamp on packages, as a symbol that seems to fall off the edge of a facade flag, as decoration for a postcard, et cetera.