In this second session we will focus on contemporary books, analysing some examples that have won awards in recent years.

What is currently considered a well-designed book? 

Through the verdict of the jury of the LAUS awards and the “Best Book Design From All Over The World” we will be able to take a look at recent editorial design and detect what the trends are in this field. We will be able to assess the adequacy between form and content and explore the role of the designer in the process of creating a book.

The book has been the medium and the message of the diverse movements in the arts during the last century. The book, with its emphatic material presence, takes on a special value now that we are witnessing its dematerialization, reduced to digital data in electronic format.

Over the Bookworm sessions we will explore several iconic books that capture the spirit of the era in which they were designed. We will place the books in their context and try to define what makes them relevant in the history of 20th century book design. The Bookworm sessions are guided by Andreu Jansà, librarian and curator of the Enric Bricall Reserve Fund.

The Work of Repair

Amica will reflect on how architectural and creative practices can orientate themselves away from invention and innovation towards the patient and slow work of repair, and consider work that is based on making long-term, personal or ethical commitments to sites, situations, and social contexts. She will cover some of Assemble’s early work, before discussing a set of projects that reorientated her and the studio’s attitudes towards the city and the rural, material ethics and intergenerational justice. 

Amica Dall is an inter-disciplinary practitioner focused on architecture and city culture and children’s right to the city. She is a founding member of Assemble, where she delivered more than 15 major projects over ten years. Her work as a writer and filmmaker has been broadcast on the BBC, exhibited at the Venice Biennale, and published in E-Flux. She recently co-wrote a book on post-carbon future for architecture with architecture practice, Material Cultures. Amica has taught across a wide range of subjects and works with both children and post-graduates.

Assemble is a multi-disciplinary collective working across architecture, design and art. Founded in 2010 to undertake a single self-built project, Assemble has since delivered a diverse and award-winning body of work, whilst retaining a democratic and co-operative working method that enables built, social and research-based work at a variety of scales, both making things and making things happen. Turner Prize in 2016, and nominated in 2022 to the Royal Academy in recognition of their collective contribution to the culture of city making.

Rewind and fastforward

Luna Maurer will elaborate on Moniker’s relation with technology in the past 20 years and its impact on their practice. Moniker is currently developing a new outlook and perspective on technology, sparked by recent rapid developments in the field. The web changed from an emancipating democratizing network into an infrastructure for big capital, the screen from a desktop publishing interface to a fundamental extension of our identity. Luna will share their latest experiments.

Luna Maurer is an interaction and media design artist. Originally from Stuttgart (Germany), she completed her studies at the Gerrit Rietveld Academy and the Sandberg Institute in Amsterdam.

With Roel Wouters she heads the Amsterdam based studio Moniker. Moniker is well known for authoring the Conditional Design Manifesto (together with Edo Paulus and Jonathan Puckey). Luna Maurer has been teaching media courses at the Gerrit Rietveld Academy, the Sandberg Institute, Royal Academy of Art, The Hague, HfG Karlsruhe and at Yale University School of Art.

Dahyun will talk about how we can convert analog into digital things and explore the possibilities of the web. Furthermore, how can we create exciting websites in unexpected ways? And how can we use online tools for better communication nowadays?

Dahyun Hwang is a graphic designer. She studied visual communication at University of Seoul in Korea and finished her master’s at Bauhaus University in Weimar, Germany. She thinks about how we can connect analog and digital. She is also a co-initiator of HHHA, a creative coding collective. She has participated in ‘Post Modern Child’ Exhibition in MoCA Busan and ‘POST IT!’ Exhibition in Tokyo. Her works have been featured in Monthly Design, It’s Nice That, CA Magazine, and so on.

HHHA (Hej Hello Hallo Annyeong) is a creative coding collective in which female creators gather to share and explore web-based works. Dahyun Hwang co-initiated HHHA with Naree Shin, and they gathered other teammates living in various places such as Germany, Denmark, and Korea.

To curate means to care. Literally. In the case of design, these objects – and the exhibitions they are featured in – talk about the human drive for progress, about creative leadership, about material economies and technological innovations. But what does it mean to curate within the field of design in the 21st century? How can exhibitions and books make a contribution to fostering more just, socially and ecologically sustainable societies? In her lecture, she will provide insights into the hands-on practice of curating, and into the broader issues that may inform how we present, discuss and practice design in the future. 

Viviane Stappmanns is a curator at the Vitra Design Museum in Weil am Rhein. She is interested in exploring the contribution curators can make to rethinking design as a practice concerned with ecological and social sustainability. In her exhibition and teaching work, she experiments with new, collaborative approaches to curating and exhibiting. She has taught at different schools and universities, among them the School of Architecture and Urban Design at RMIT University in Melbourne, Australia and, most recently the University of Arts and Design in Karlsruhe.

Prior to working at the Vitra Design Museum, Viviane has worked as an editor and curator within architecture and design contexts in Australia and Germany, and holds degrees in Interior Design and Journalism.

The exhibition “Here We Are! Women in Design 1900 – Today!” (2021) will open at the Barcelona Design Museum in October 2023. Currently, she is working on the international travelling exhibition “Garden Futures”, due to open at the Vitra Design Museum in Spring 2023.

Folch Creative-driven brand ecosystem. Acid House (creative and business innovation hub in Barcelona and Madrid), White Horse (creative production), Avanti Studio (city branding & way finding ), NOW (digital innovation and transformation), Creative Services (fashion and e-commerce), PILLS (digital education), Gallery Studio (New music formats), G.Records (Record label), Gallery (Music Innovation), Eldorado Agency (outdoor creative agency), J.Franc (3D visualization and AR/VR solutions), FFF (Digital type foundry) and Self (talent management).

Introduction to the Enric Bricall Special Collection, a collection of books whose design and typography represent excellence in 20th century editorial design. We will offer a historical review from 1900 to Postmodernism, passing through the interwar avant-garde, the New Typography and Swiss graphics.

We will look at some representative books from each period and analyse their characteristics. We will try to understand where their importance lies and why they have gone down in the history of graphic design as canonical examples of editorial design in the last century.

The book has been the medium and the message of the diverse movements in the arts during the last century. The book, with its emphatic material presence, takes on a special value now that we are witnessing its dematerialization, reduced to digital data in electronic format.

Over the Bookworm sessions we will explore several iconic books that capture the spirit of the era in which they were designed. We will place the books in their context and try to define what makes them relevant in the history of 20th century book design. The Bookworm sessions are guided by Andreu Jansà, librarian and curator of the Enric Bricall Reserve Fund.