This top magazine from proHolz Austria presents decision-makers, architects and designers with the current trends in timber building at the highest level. Four times each year it brings important information on form, material and construction, theory and practice, timber research and timber construction in the form of interplay between the various disciples. Acceptance, reading frequency and intensity remain at a constantly high level. “zuschnitt” has proven its value as an important element for communication between the specialist public –a magazine about timber as a material and buildings in timber that focuses consistently on the target group of planners and decision-makers. Great attention is paid to the quality of the contents. The visual design of the magazine responds to these aspirations with bibliophile design and implementation. In order to distance itself from the “colour intoxication” that dominates communication media today the reproduction is deliberately restricted to black and white lithography. The inside pages are cleanly and editorially organized with, in part, an emphasis on the text. The impression of advertising is deliberately avoided. Independent surveys have convincingly confirmed the success of this medium in terms of attention, reader-magazine relationships and image. In addition to dealing with factual themes a number of issues are marked by design and poetic intentions. For example issue 16 examined “timber in language and timber as language” – it was deliberately designed without photography. Here things are precisely the other way around: the images are placed in the texts and in the typographical design – Pinocchio’s nose across several pages, a flow image with hundreds of different names of types of wood etc. In the title, too the usual image is avoided and a structured red surface is printed in letter printing with a wooden block. The structure of wood is visible and tangible. “No matter whether it is in the field of architecture or communication, choosing a certain material for a design application means incorporating its function and its character in the design. Beneath the surface of what is purely visible deeper significances of image and things are concealed. Why does something appear to us to be dry, bombastic, dusty, romantic, modest, unappealing or attractive? How can we, as designers, deal with this? The language of the material wood is varied and it can be experienced in a sensual material way; these are not artificially produced surfaces but appearances that develop from the life of the tree.” Reinhard Gassner

The publication “Bauen mit Holz – Wege in die Zukunft” appeared in conjunction with an eponymous exhibition by the TU Munich, which was held in the Pinakothek der Moderne (10 November 2011 to 5 February 2012). The aim was to present the ecological importance, technological potential and new aesthetics of the familiar construction material, timber. With the aid of explanatory graphics the first chapter illustrates the contribution to active climate protection made by the forest as a supplier of material. All the examples of buildings used in the graphics are presented by means of brief texts, informative photos and plans. In the following part nine well-known experts analyse the technological and aesthetic potential of the construction material timber in clearly structured texts. These texts are illustrated by a variety of examples of architecture. In the second chapter the main focus is on the constructional/technological aspect, which is reflected by the greater amount of building documentation material. In the third chapter large-format photography impressively illustrates the enormous range of exciting design possibilities that timber offers as a construction material. Rounded off with a comprehensive bibliography, this publication represents an interesting, descriptive and sensually stimulating read in a reader-friendly format – and not just for experts.

“Holzböden im Freien“ (Wooden Flooring Outdoors) is a book from the series proHolz Information. The prejudice that wood is not practical for outdoor flooring is dismantled by means of expert tips from Holzforschung (wood research) Austria and by a number of convincing international examples. Empirical knowledge and the clarity of the reference projects are deliberately separated from each other in design terms but also in the layout of the book. The book core is embedded between natural brown printed front and back endpapers. The cover shows the sky and clouds and becomes the emotional starting point for the conditions under which wood products are used outdoors.

An architecture book composed of visual essays in five acts: persons / outside / inside / ideas / actors; as intermezzi there are plans and texts in the form of written reflections by five authors: Emmanuel Caille, Andrea Maria Dusl, Marina Hämmerle, Otto Kapfinger and Anatxu Zabalbeascoa. The buildings appear in all acts, the separate pictures establish cross-references across the pages to the virtual whole. In the manner of a “road movie” the journey through the architectural landscape of Marte.Marte is deliberately separated into inside and outside. Why? The aim is to enable the viewer to experience the architecture of Marte.Marte sensually – from the void to the volume and back again. Marte.Marte build their “nests” with very precise external shells, the “semi-outside” of the internal courtyards seems itself like a split or separation, a part of the rigid spatial boundaries. The fascinating qualities of the interiors include the special scale, the way in which expansiveness alternates with constriction, the increase and reduction of the pressure of spatial states and the architects’ handling of light. In the external elevations one is struck by the way the horizontal building volumes are anchored in the ground, the special figure-ground relationships and field of forces generated by the buildings. The graphical implementation of these qualities offers a new visual narrative of architecture in an unconventional book form. The inside / outside relationships in Marte.Marte’s architecture are woven together in a complex way. These relationships are presented in analogous form in the space of the pages of the book: aerial views of the buildings on the one hand convey an “extreme outside” in the sequence of photos of indoor spaces; on the other hand the reduced “X-rays” of the floor plans and sections form icon-like counterpoints in the “outside” sequence of images. The aerial views produce a visual miniaturization of the landscape and the buildings. By raising the buildings from the familiar plane the aerial perspective gives them a dimension of depth like a model. The magnificent series of colour images by Bruno Klomfar, Mark Lins, Petra Rainer, Ignacio Martinez forms the actual substance of the visual narrative and the images are articulated and reflected upon by informative passages of text with their own typographical design. As a volume, looked at from outside, the book seems like a building block – monochrome, compact, straight-edged and sharp without any protrusions or modelling. The voluminous, coarse-grain paper gives the book a tangible volume and a tactile lightness – a black box 163 x 225 x 41mm, with surprising insights on 416 pages. The cut edges, which are black on all sides, additionally give each panorama page an ultra-thin surround. The cover title makes its visual impact solely as the result of being partly painted – black on black.

This is not a book. As architecture, what you are holding is an unusual object that contains a multiplicity of situations and places. There’s room for reading, for vision, for comparison. This publication presents the APPROACH, the attitudes, and the architectural works of Geninasca Delefortrie as an opportunity to reflect in general on the relationship between architecture and its geographical, cultural, economic, and political context. You can run through the following pages in several ways. In accordance with its title, the book is structured like an open matrix of various elements. A polyphonic dialogue runs throughout the book, involving the words and viewpoints of many participants, who discuss the assumptions behind the practice of architecture, analysing the relationship between architecture and its context, between architecture and its clients, between public and private. It considers what the architect does, his work between programme and interpretation, the various planning tools at his disposal, and his end product: the shape and beauty of things. This wide discussion is illustrated by and imbued with the architectural works of Geninasca Delefortrie. Twenty projects are presented at length, each as a specific operation. These are put forward as concrete examples of how to clarify the ongoing relationship between architects, clients, contractors, public officials, and civilised society. A double page at the beginning of the book collects and compares all the principal buildings, presented according to the same parameters, in such a way as to bring out their richness of dimensions, the variety of functions, and the typological complexity that the architects have dealt with from 1995 to the present day. The independent judgements of five ‘critics’ complete the deliberation and help to define the character and qualities of the architectural approach that Geninasca Delefortrie works out in their creations. All these discrete elements are indissolubly interwoven among themselves: every theme for discussion relates to another aspect of the practice of architecture, projects can crop up in many parts of the book; attitudes and dialogues often return to the same argument, but always linking it to further aspects and insights. Alberto Alessi

For a number of years Reinhard Gassner has been practicing phenomena with the simple word ‘text’. The ‘T’ at the start is pronounced differently to the ‘T’ at the end. At first it accelerates, it even borrows an aspirated ‘H’ and then ends with a rather dry final note, between the ‘X’ and the ‘T’ a ‘sharp S’ develops. The ‘E’ is essentially a letter with many different tones. The typographical grimaces that result from the various fonts tell different stories; for instance the ‘E’ that laughs out loud, the shyly smiling ‘E’, or the ‘E’ that grins maliciously.