In early February Mark announced an open competition for a cover design to celebrate the magazine’s 50th issue. Above all, we hoped the contest would attract a raft of outstanding and unique ideas. Participants were provided with a cover template and photographic images that would appear in the issue, and were

given the freedom to use or not use such aids as desired. Much to our delight, the competition was met with great enthusiasm. No fewer than 540 entries from 48 countries made it anything but easy to single out the best proposal. Having seen a legion of graphic works pass in review over the years, we were thrilled to find a high level of originality, ingenuity and wit in many of these entries. In particular, the jury salutes the playfulness of the ‘handmade’ designs, which stood out from the crowd and brought a sense of festivity to the table. Although displaying a great deal of diversity, the cover designs we received fell into a few major categories. We observed, for example, a wide range of interpretations of the number 50: a celebratory theme emphasized by bright colours and grand gestures. Equally interesting was work from participants who dug into Mark’s past and made new creations based on the ‘blueprints’ of previous issues. A Korean theme emerged in proposals that referenced the photography we provided, and our stack of entries also included more than a few inventive and often successful ‘logo experiments’.

We’ve Got You

CoveredI

31 - 40

21 - 30

11 - 20

5 - 10

1 - 5

Germany

Italy, Netherlands

Thailand, UK, USA, Portugal, France

Canada, Belgium, Greece, Spain, Denmark, Poland, Switzerland

Austria, Russia, Australia, Brazil, Hungary, Slovenia, Bulgaria, Indonesia, Malaysia, Mexico, Norway,

Bosnia and Herzegovina, China, Croatia, Cyprus, Estonia, Finland, Hong Kong, India, Ireland, Israel,

Japan, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Malta, Peru, Singapore, Slovakia, Sweden, Turkey, Ukraine, Vietnam

Geographic Distribiution of Participants 48 countries | 265 participants | 540 entries

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WinnerEfisio Nicolò Sabiucciu won our hearts with his original and meticulously executed concept. He submitted a robust hand-made object showing the ‘flesh and bones’ of a building, a work created specifically for the competition. We reflected on the reason for its strong appeal. Were we captured by the material reference? The handcrafted physicality and decon-structed appearance? The anthropomorphic proportions of a figure akin to Wall•E and R2-D2? We concluded that it was probably a combination of all those things. Difficult though it was to pinpoint the allure of Sabiucciu’s design, we were unanimous in our response. Among the 540 entries, his stood out for all the right reasons and was the obvious winner. A concrete cover. We couldn’t have done it better. The 28-year-old Italian lives in London and is complet-ing an MA course in graphic arts at UWE Bristol.

Do you read Mark magazine?EFISIO NICOLÒ SABIUCCIU: I do read Mark. Fortunately,

my university buys a copy of each issue. I think it’s a fantastic magazine: nice format, with a wide range of topics.

Can you tell us a little bit about your cover design and the creative process behind it?I heard about the competition from an AIAP post on

Facebook, and I decided to engage the challenge and make a piece for the occasion. I love to ‘translate’ materials into my work, and thanks to my mould-making skills, the idea came quickly. The use of familiar materials – concrete and metal bars – refers to the nature of the magazine. My sculpture tells a story about architecture.

I enjoy working in visual cultures and don’t really like to call myself a graphic designer, because I like making stuff using different materials and techniques, avoiding digital when I can. The objects I make have different destinations. Some are read-able and able to communicate information, while others are closer to product design, reflecting my earlier degree in indus-trial design, which strongly influences my practice.

How long did it take to make the mould?Making the mould took me a week, and I needed another

couple of days for shooting and editing.

Runners-upPerhaps inspired by Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol, Edoardo Milli and Rebecca Harris, as well as Leopoldo Tinazzi, turned to the Ghost of Mark Past. They revisited previous covers but, unlike Dickens, did not rouse fear but joyously celebrated history. Milli and Harris reduced the colour scheme of each cover to Mark’s logo; layered the logos; and built a colourful, 50-storey-tall, skyscraping ‘wedding cake’. Tinazzi used the shape and colour of issue numbers to reveal the essence of past covers – a nice guessing game for those with a photographic memory. Because both designs are mired in the past, however, we missed the Ghost of Mark Present and the Ghost of Mark Yet to Come. Various entries featured a big ‘50’ on the cover and just as many played with the Mark logo. One of the more success-ful designs combined the two ideas. Sgamysgamy whimsically incorporated the Mark logo into a dynamic graphic design that included gold foil, which may be why it reminded us of the 1968 Olympic Games in Mexico. Francesco Innocenti’s cover also pictured a big ‘50’, composed of the images we’d provided of projects lined up for Mark 50. Architecture as typography or typography as architecture – an example of what Venturi, Scott Brown and Izenour described as a ‘duck’ in their 1972 manifesto, Learn-ing from Las Vegas. Another reference that came to mind was Marshall McLuhan’s ‘The medium is the message’. Applied to the ‘big 50’ covers, the phrase can be interpreted as ‘Archi-tecture [medium] is number 50 [message]’. And McLuhan suggested we focus on the content and not, in this case, on a random number.

Leopoldo TinazziSgamysgamy

Efisio Nicolò Sabiucciu

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How could we not fall for a home-made birthday cake? In fact, we had already asked some architects to come up with the perfect cake for our party. (See page 68.) The one we got from Henrik Axelsson was in the form of a house. Although quite novel in approach, the archetypal architecture repre-sented in Axelsson’s baked building was not what typically appears in Mark, but . . . it looked delicious. Artist and graphic-design student Serge Verpaelst submitted six proposals, the strongest of which featured a

Sven Winkler, Simeon Brugger and Florian Smutny Kevin Botchar and Charlotte Ratel Antonas (Aristide Antonas and Katerina Koutsogianni)

drawing of the Seongdong Cultural Center against the flag of South Korea. We were less smitten by the laurel wreath around the number 50, which resembled the Fred Perry logo. Alan Cheung and Sarah Mui’s proposal expressed ambient energy resonating from the number 50, like a beat-ing heart. The drawing evoked the work of cross-media artist Joyce Hinterding, especially her Loops and Fields, Series 4. As a cover design, it didn’t hit the mark, but it was one of the more original entries.

Those who simply had funA number of submissions left jury members scratching their heads and/or grinning from ear to ear. With the adventurous spirit of children, Sven Winkler, Simeon Brugger and Florian Smutny conjured up what must be the coolest cereal box to ever hit the breakfast table. Kevin Botchar and Charlotte Ratel, on the other hand, seemed to have travelled an arduous path in their countdown of the days leading to our 50th issue. The Antonas entry deserves a mention, even though we didn’t understand what the picturesque collage was trying to say. Was it the outcome of sleepless nights or daydreams? I guess we’ll never know. Although a 50th issue is worth celebrating, and although we don’t mind commemorating past achievements, Mark keeps a keen eye on the present and future of architecture. Or, as Italian artist, designer and inventor Bruno Munari once put it: ‘You must always have something to look forward to, because, if you have something in the pipeline, you stay young.’

On behalf of the jury, Barbara Iwanicka

Jury: Mariëlle van Genderen, François-Luc Giraldeau, Barbara Iwanicka, David Keuning, Cathelijn Kruunenberg, Federica Ricci, Robert Thiemann, and Arthur Wortmann

Edoardo Milli and Rebecca Harris

Francesco Innocenti

Alan Cheung and Sarah Mui Henrik Axelsson

Serge Verpaelst

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Paterne Bulcourt

Veronika Salzseiler Ximena Rios-Zertuche Luca Banchelli Luca Toniolo

Alex Chocron

Agata Roszkowska Mark Havasi and Charles MannencMarieke de Boer (Styleyes)

Architecture Uncomfortable Workshop

Ritty Tacsum

Lauren Rolwing

Artemis Papachristou Passakorn Chantanakorn

Jackkrit Anantakul (Design Reform Council)

Peter Riedel

Toni Harzer, Lars Trautmann and Claudia Scheer (Upstruct)

Taweesak Tomongkol

Verena Metz

Margarita Chechulina (Greta Berlin)

Nejc Vasl

Chris Malcolm Patryk Ślusarski

Lana Hunjic

Dmitriy Kovalenko

Alina Hoyer and Boris Bonev Olga Loy

That’s A Studio (Dieneke Schuffelers and Marielle Schuurman)

Peter Bos (Houdbaar)

Lapo Ceccherelli Sara Westermann

Margarida Borges Aaron Beebe

The other entries that made it to our longlist

Johannes Nathow and Florian Geppert Jorge Amador

Alessio Vanin Patipat Chaiwitesh

Rizki Krisnadi Sam Barcham

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