For anyone unfamiliar with Emanuel Christ and Christoph Gantenbein, this publication is useful. If it is true that architects think with eyes, one need not have crossed paths with these Swiss to see that their gaze is inquisitive and sharp. Marking 25 years together, they have compiled and classified their output in three carefully edited volumes, in keeping with the national tradition of producing monographs in installments. Beyond a strict chronology of nearly 200 projects is a representative, thought-provoking manifesto.
Similarly, if there is no doubt that architects write with images, it is not necessary to have read a text by Christ and Gantenbein to know that their calligraphy is rigorous and neat. This explains their allegiance to the Palladian tradition and their easy adaptation to the rules guiding the book, a contact sheet (fruit of alliance with designer Fuegliste) that uses only pictures. The visual bent relegates reading to the appendices, distributed in three tomes so that everything, from credits to critical essays, is organized the same way.
And, if indeed architects make books the way they build, without having visited a building of theirs one grasps that their work stands silent and consistent. Against devotion to bigness, the regular grid is colonized equally with photos, plans, or sketches, organized systematically but with no size hierarchy. The checkerboard arrangement diffuses singularities but gives coherence to the oeuvre. If we accept these three statements, a look at the three books will give anyone an idea of Emanuel, Christoph, and their work.
