BUCHARCHITEKTUR – the art of building a book

Kathrin Schmuck avoids stamping her own creative fin­ger­print too heavily on any of this work. Quite the reverse. Her talent for empa­thetic app­re­ciation of archi­tecture and her fine instinct for trans­forming har­mo­nious design into book form brings printed rooms into being, allowing the relevant archi­tecture to unfold in a powerful and yet delicate way and develop its own distinct identity.

Three years ago, URLAUBSARCHITEKTUR brought the book architect on board to re-design its house publi­cation. The first new-look volume – the 2017 Sel­ection – promptly received the German Design Award.

The 2019 Sel­ection (expected to appear in October 2018) is already in the making and at the end of June the entire URLAUBSARCHITEKTUR – BUCHARCHITEKTUR team gathered tog­ether for a final edi­torial meeting in Hanover: Apart from one or two decisions of graphic pre­sen­tation still to be fina­lised over the coming weeks, a new com­pendium of unique HOLIDAY ARCHITECTURE pro­perties is good to go!

I took the oppor­tunity at our meeting in Hanover to interview Kathrin:

You studied archi­tecture for many years as an architect in famous archi­tec­tural prac­tices at home and abroad and you are now designing (archi­tecture) books. How did that come about?

Actually, to some extent, it was quite pre­dic­table …. (laughter). Even when I was a student, after sub­mitting the actual design, I always made an extra little book or folder. At the beginning it was more some­thing to fiddle with, but over time, I dis­co­vered that these little books were not just abs­tracts but could develop a format and cha­racter of their own. They were like a second aspect of the design, con­cen­t­rating the ideas and the actual concept – all on the few square cen­ti­metres of paper of a little book.

So it came about that, in addition to my actual work, I was also always making books, initially during my time as a member of the research staff at the Bauhaus Uni­versity in Weimar e.g. an archi­tec­tural guide to the works of Alberto Campo Baeza, then later an exhi­bition cata­logue or aca­demic works. After the first “proper” book, the mono­graph of works for the Lederer Rag­nars­dóttir Oei practice, was reco­g­nised as one of the most beau­tiful German books of 2013 (die Schönsten Deut­schen Bücher) a prize awarded by the Stiftung Buch­kunst, I took that as a green light – and went self-employed as a book designer under the label BUCHARCHITEKTUR.

You have described your work as trans­lating archi­tecture into books – how do you go about it?

It isn’t much dif­ferent to building a house.

First I visualise the clients’ wishes. ”Who are we trying to reach? What do we want to publish? What is our budget?“ are some of the ques­tions I discuss with the client first. At the same time I sound out the market. Through my extensive network of many renowned publishers it soon becomes clear which publisher might be inte­rested and what the special poten­tials and emphasis of the spe­cific project might be.

Then comes the design phase itself. Not very dif­ferent from if I were working on an archi­tec­tural design. I always work in several variants. In con­tinual con­sul­tation with the client, little by little, the concept and the book begin to take on a clear form. It is from this design phase that the book itself even­tually emerges.

But that doesn’t mean that the book is then com­plete. Just like a building, a book is made from mate­rials. Weight, colour and structure of the paper are just as important as the choice of binding, the twine to be used etc. All this comes tog­ether to create the essential cha­racter of the book and its intrinsic value. Finally there follows the last step in pro­duction which never loses its exci­tement. As a rule, I am present myself at the printers’ until the final stage in pro­cessing, che­cking that the quality meets my and my clients’ expec­ta­tions.

At every stage in the process, I am always the direct contact for my cus­tomers and will, if required, coor­dinate the whole team from authors through to litho­graphers and printers.

Your book designs have already received many awards: German Design Award, DAM Archi­tec­tural Book Award, die Schönsten Deut­schen Bücher (the most beau­tiful German books) from the Stiftung Buch­kunst, die Schönsten Bücher Öster­reichs… (Austria’s most beau­tiful books). The judges‘ assess­ments repea­tedly refer to attri­butes such as “tranquil“, ”subdued“, ”delicate“, ”calming“, ”subdued but clear and com­pelling “. This reads like a cha­racter study. Do you see yourself in these descrip­tions?

I would put it like this: I focus all my attention on every book so that the concept of a book and its design always have to serve the con­tents and should never be a goal in them­selves. Typo­graphy is like the ground plan for a book. It gives structure and order, con­nects the various chapters and gives a book rhythm and cha­racter. That is why I always refer to the archi­tecture of a book.

What was the key concept on the redesign of the URLAUBSARCHITEKTUR 2017 book?

In recent years, URLAUBSARCHITEKTUR has made breath-taking pro­gress. I am very happy to be a part of this deve­lo­pment and have had the oppor­tunity to be involved in the new design of its yearbook. URLAUBSARCHITEKTUR represents casual style com­bined with the highest stan­dards of quality and material. It is this exciting com­bi­nation that I wanted to translate into book form. That is why the book aspires to the same values as the houses por­trayed in it: One-offs, authentic, full of atmo­sphere and with an indi­vidual, per­sonal face. It pleases me in par­ti­cular that it is not only the readers that expe­rience this, but also the German Design Award judges who picked out the Sel­ection 2017 book to receive an award.

How should a book be designed in order to attract attention, e.g. when you are rum­maging through the shelves of a bookshop?

A book should make people curious, and should ideally work on several levels. The first thing to make an impact is the cover. Like the façade of a house, it is the face of a book. Then I look at the internal structure, how the book is ordered and the system behind it. Just like a floor plan, it should neither be banal nor unneces­s­arily com­pli­cated, but must provide the right solution for the con­tents. If I like what I see when I look at both of these things, I will start to read. A bit like exploring the indi­vidual rooms of a house in greater detail. A good book always has these three levels.

Trans­lating whose archi­tecture into book form is on your per­sonal wish list?

I don’t have any spe­cific wish list in my head … What I love about making books is much more the joint dia­logue with my clients, the challenge of meeting their wishes and expec­ta­tions. This could be pre­senting a built work, the life work of an artist, an insight into the world inside a uni­versity or a coll­ection of URLAUBSARCHITEKTUR holiday homes. It’s a bit like in archi­tecture itself. It isn’t the building project that decides the rele­vance of a building, but its internal and external quality. Even a little thing like a book is no dif­ferent in this respect.

Kathrin Schmuck, born in 1975, studied Archi­tecture at the Bauhaus Uni­versity in Weimar and at the Kent Institute of Art and Design in Can­terbury. In 2001 she gra­duated with honours from the Bauhaus Uni­versity. Between 2001 and 2002 she was a member of the research staff at the Institute for Design and Building Studies at the Bauhaus Uni­versity Weimar, then worked as an architect in Spain at the EstudioVIERNA9 archi­tec­tural practice in Cadiz. Between 2007 and 2016 she was a project manager at the Lederer Rag­nars­dóttir Oei archi­tec­tural practice, among other things designing the mono­graph of Lederer Rag­nars­dóttir Oei 1. Between 2011 and 2014 she was lec­turer for the Design course at the Department of Archi­tecture at the Uni­versity of Applied Sci­ences (Fach­hoch­schule) Lübeck. Since the beginning of 2014 she has worked as a free­lance book designer focusing on archi­tec­tural books.