Unfinished Atlas

Join us on 9 December for the Basel book launch of our new book Unfinished Atlas!

Unfinished Atlas brings together nineteen projects by Manuel Herz Architects that span Europe, Africa, Asia and the Americas. The book traces how concepts and techniques develop across the practice’s diverse contexts and reveals architecture as an open, processual discipline in which research, design and collaboration continuously intersect. Instead of merely celebrating completed buildings, it also examines loops, failures and afterlives as crucial moments of the architectural process. The publication is conceived as a cartography of ideas – an “unfinished atlas” that maps the office’s curiosity and its commitment to understanding architecture as a tool for social and cultural reflection.

The conversation brings together architect Manuel Herz, graphic designer Ludovic Balland, and artist Senam Okudzeto, whose work likewise moves between architecture, history and cultural memory. Together they will discuss how the book’s editorial structure – inspired by the layout of the Talmud and by countercultural manuals such as the Whole Earth Catalog – creates new forms of reading and connecting projects. They will explore how architectural and artistic practices today can respond to questions of migration, nationhood, ecology and resource flows without seeking closure or final form. In this sense, Unfinished Atlas speaks to a broader artistic and intellectual moment that values process over object, dialogue over monument, and the unfinished as a space for imagination.

Free but registration essential, please register at the following email address: events@manuelherz.com