Silent Form

Piet and Wim Eckert established their studio, now operating as E2A Piet Eckert and Wim Eckert Architects, in Zürich in 2001. They soon gained national, and increasingly also internationally, recognition for their work in exhibition designs, industrial architecture, public buildings, and housing.

American-born photographer Jon Naiman has been studying and documenting E2A’s work for many years as a photographic artist. His preferred means for this is black-and-white photography of their architectural models. His carefully conceived images show the entire range of models, from conceptual studies and working materials to highly detailed miniatures of realized buildings. Naiman aims to emphasize the formal qualities of the models. At the same time, his photographs create room for reflection on their exemplary character, lifting it also to a new semantic level. Naiman shows experiences urban space, of visual space rather than mere miniature buildings. He inspires the viewer to ask what actually constitutes our perception of space and images. His pictures oscillate between abstract, almost calligraphic, signs and the perfectly focused depiction of a spatial situation.

The conversion of this visual research into a book is gives utmost care to design and materialization, including a special binding, and the arrangement and sequence of images printed in duotone on full pages and spreads.