Gerald Zugmann: Blue Universe

This book documents a decade-long cooperation of the internationally renowned photographer Gerald Zugmann with the architectural team COOP HIMMELB(L)AU. The architects, who call themselves "post-industrial expressionists", frequently base their work on spontaneous and psychographic images and models. The volume illustrates the thinking and working process by means of photographs of numerous projects. The development of COOP HIMMELB(L)AU forms may be traced by means of pictures of models in various stages of experimentation. With his precise and individual vocabulary, Gerald Zugmann (who has photographed architecture by Carlo Scarpa, Frank Lloyd Wright, Rudolph M. Schindler, Louis I. Kahn and Günther Domenig, among others) established an entirely new generation of architectural photography in the course of some thirty years. His photographs are not about the functional aspects of architecture, rather, Zugmann is looking for the perspective that reveals the essence of a project. His emphasis on light and shadow, and a tight focus on outstanding details lets the idea of a building take shape in dramatic pictures comparable to still lifes.