Sigfried Giedion

Begründung der Jury

★★
Switzerland /// Schweiz
★★

An unfinished book project by Swiss art historian Sigfried Giedion (1888–1968) has been turned into a substantial though lightweight volume that seems to contain three books. This is because the material chosen for the outer cover is also used for internal dividers, resulting in what you might call inner covers.

A champion of modern architecture, Giedion began working on this ambitious book project in 1929. Aiming to provide cultural orientation in times of chaos, he focused on the period from around 1750 to the 1930s. The plan was to create three to five volumes with a multidisciplinary approach, exploring industrialization, social welfare and modern art. For various reasons, after almost ten years of analysis, his work was interrupted and remained unfinished.

In collaboration with the Sigfried Giedion Foundation, editor Sokratis Georgiadis has now turned his attention to the wealth of material and, in close cooperation with the publisher and designers, managed to collate the fragments of Giedion’s draft to create an impressive reference work that is both rich and functional. The clean typographic composition and hierarchy provides clear orientation within the multilayered arrangements of texts and images, while the placing of archive material on coloured scan backgrounds offers a refreshing contrast to the various historical documents.

Together, the sturdy, flexible cover and rough, soft paper provide the ideal framework for a treatise that demands careful
reading. Great book design that does justice to the content within.