Legislating Architecture Schweiz
The Berlin-based architect Arno Brandlhuber and his team document 17 referendums on architectural issues in Switzerland since the early 1980s. The small-format, black-and-white softcover impressively handles a wide range of texts and visuals that have been deliberately treated to give them the feeling of archival materials. Campaign posters, historical photographs and other items, with any colour removed, are presented singly or in pairs on a page, without commentary, their size adjusted to the uniform type area. Between them are excerpts from draft laws, referendum proposals and brochures. Everything is readable and recognisable at first glance - vital in a political campaign - while the page headers ensure the reader always knows which vote is being referred to. The juxtaposition of divergent voices underscores the complexity of the topic, while the loose sequence of various images, texts and combinations of the two raises further questions about the relationship between the written medium of the law and the visual medium of architecture.
