BY BRADFORD MCKEE
Image Courtesy Topos Magazine 99.
Readers of the much-beloved magazine Topos will see a striking difference with the newest issue, its 99th, released in mid-June: a front-to-back redesign and editorial overhaul overseen by its editor-in-chief, Tanja Braemer. It is the first redesign of Topos since 2005. The new format, arriving in the title?s 25th year, slices its landscape-driven content in new ways and moves it closer to urban design and planning in its coverage of what Braemer calls ?open-space culture.?
?I would like the urban disciplines to be more confident, to be more outgoing, and say, yeah, we are talking about free space,? Braemer said from her office in Munich, where Topos is published by Callwey Verlag, which also produces Garten + Landschaft (of which Braemer is also editor), the venerable architecture title Baumeister, and others. ?We want our readers to feel authorized to talk on the same level as architects. We?re trying to impart that we are a discipline that is becoming more important and more appreciated.? Topos Editor-in-Chief Tanja Braemer. Copyright: Deutsche Fachpresse/Fernando Baptista.
The mission articulates in an enterprising, free-range fashion in the new issue, titled ?Wounds.? The new design, created by the magazine?s art director, Heike Wagner, trades the stately hems of the previous version?s white pages for more full-bleed photography to stare at and consider, alternating with entire pages of text. Section-front pages are ...