“This book is extraordinary”

Austria’s Most Beautiful Books of 2023 were awarded on June 3. A jury of five experts from the areas of publishing, bookselling, graphic design, and print production chose 15 winning titles from among 183 submissions produced in 2023. Park Books’ title Roger Boltshauser—Response received an additional honor from the Austrian Ministry of the Arts, Culture, the Civil Service, and Sport, being chosen among three winning books to be awarded the State Prize in the category “Contemporary Artbooks, Photography, Architecture, Exhibition Catalogs.” Congratulations to everyone involved in the making of this extraordinary publication. We are thrilled!

“The design of the exhibition catalog Response for architect Roger Boltshauser transforms the book space into a tectonic setting. Andrea Gassner and Christopher Walser subtly divide the book block into three parts by using fine cuts on the fore-edge of the hollow-spine softcover. They guide the handling of the book body by creating a “jumping” fore-edge. When quickly thumbing through the pages, only the ones that catch our fingers become visible—the shorter pages remain hidden. It is only when we understand the book and its mechanics that its poetics fully reveal themselves. Consistently, clearly, and with perfect form, Atelier Andrea Gassner follows the concept of a hybrid book character in response to Boltshauser’s comprehensive and layered architecture. As an object, the book’s design seems obvious, but behind it lies a highly sensitive design process that has produced concrete and independent forms. Last but not least, the decisions regarding visual formats, reading directions, the rotation of the format—for fabulously large-scale, monochrome photographs—color palette, and typesetting, as well as the editing of the images, plans, and sketches, reverberate in a three-tone vibrato. The texts? Obviously trilingual, perfectly hierarchized and typeset. This book is extraordinary.”