City of Sound is about cities, design, architecture, music, media, politics and more. Written by Dan Hill since 2001.

image from www.flickr.com

image from www.flickr.com

This is a fantastic idea: "Fulcrum is a weekly architectural publication printed on Bedford Press at the Architectural Association. It was founded in January 2011 by Graham Baldwin, Aram Mooradian & Jack Self." 

As I'm posting this, the current issue (#51), edited by Baldwin and Self, happens to convey some of the thinking behind the publication, both as a response to the increasingly image-based non-critical architectural media, and an experment in terms of format. As they point out, most student publications don't get beyond 3 or 4 issues per year; to produce a weekly of quality writing, albeit two sides, is ambitous but to be commended. I love the idea of weekly newsheets being produced for particular spaces—in this case, the AA and surrounds. It's somehow absurd and deadly serious. The writing is often exemplary—browse the archives—and the aesthetic is somehow 1950s Daily Express readallaboutit and the right now of Medium. And of course its physicality, for a hyper-specific ambit, is a smart move.

"The purpose of this piece of paper is to be folded, passed around, photocopied, left on buses. In short, its essence is in part its physicality." (From Fulcrum #51)

Every project should be pushing an agenda and pushing a format in unison, and this does both rather adeptly. Top marks.

image from www.flickr.com

It's a beautifully simple format—a large image on one side, and two articles juxtaposed on the backside—and the agenda is being aggressively pursued by pulling in well-known contributors and characters alongside the newer, lesser-known voices.

They also produced a bespoke variant for 2012 Venice Biennale, The Commonplace.

image from www.flickr.com

AA Fulcrum

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