Following light

Creativity is normally not the first thing that comes to mind when you think of annual reports. Unlike the annual publication at Zumtobel: The leading light specialist is renowned for its strong links to the creative world. Thus, each year we can look forward excitedly to see which designer, artist or architect Zumtobel has chosen to collaborate with. Ever since 1992, each year a new creative mind offers a new creative take on the subject of light, be it David Chipperfield, James Turrell, Elizabeth Diller or Sagmeister & Walsh. For the artistic Annual Report 2018-19 Austrian architect Dietmar Eberle of Baumschlager Eberle Architekten addressed the task of exploring light and how it is visible: “Light is the core element in architecture,” Eberle suggests. Together with Sascha Lötscher of Gottschalk+Ash Int’l he takes the reader on a trip from Z to A, from Dark to Light. The sharp contrasts that lighting brings to architecture are captured in black-and-white photographs taken by students of Dietmar Eberle at ETH Zürich.

You cannot guess at first glance that the buildings staged by lighting are in fact models, as the views of stairwells and shafts, of window and door openings simply seem so realistic. “The idea is to visualize light and these works are truly defined by that,” Eberle explains. The path light takes is also reflected in the layout: In the sequence of chapters the paper gets ever brighter, the font ever darker. In-between there are small highlights in the guise of yellow inserts, an homage to the team, as these striking strips bear the names, in alphabetical order, of the staff at the Zumtobel Group. Just how diverse the Zumtobel project spectrum realized in 2018-19 is can be explored using QR codes that give the reader a digital insight in the form of videos, project descriptions and image galleries.