Workshop tutor: Richard Levene, co-founder El Croquis

Concept: Javier F. Contreras

Assistant: Sven Högger

El Croquis is one of the most prestigious architectural magazines in the world. Founded in 1982 by Richard Levene and Fernando Marquez, it publishes five monographs every year. The volumes dedicated to established Pritzker Prize names like OMA Rem Koolhaas, SANAA Sejima & Nishizawa, Herzog & de Meuron, Alvaro Siza or Rafael Moneo, are considered their respective oeuvre complète.

The magazine almost never publishes nocturnal photographs of buildings. The same goes for other major architecture magazines. During SDTLP 2020, HEAD – Genève invited Richard Levene to create a “night edition” of El Croquis. The workshop focused on the idea that night is a forgotten paradigm in the construction of modern and contemporary architectural discourse.

In order to fill this gap, students of HEAD – Genève’s various departments developed an El Croquis Night based on the magazine’s photographic and editorial language. Students spent two weeks photographing prominent contemporary buildings in Geneva, from blue hour to sunset under Levene’s supervision, a material that they later laid out and edited in a virtual edition of the journal. The combination of photographic portrayal, plan and text selection and editing of the collected material enabled students to understand El Croquis’ working methods.