Having been incepted forty years ago in Baden, Switzerland, following the bibliophile passion of founder Lars Müller, working closely with authors in accordance with self-imposed rigorous standards, his publishing house has firmly established itself on the horizon of publishers with highly coveted, carefully edited and designed publications on tenets anchored within the realms architecture, design, and contemporary art.
We have grown to love Lars Müller Publishing for the fact that its releases are not to be understood as isolated projects but rather as components of a rich tapestry of visual content with Lars Müller’s DNA tangibly reverberating throughout each release.
Informed by meticulous attention to detail and an ethos that is committed to creating books that can be understood by people without necessarily having contextual knowledge, Lars Müller offers authors, editors, designers and publishers a forum in book form from which they can act as the advocate of the reader and portray their respective visions.
Unlike contemporary publishing houses and producers of coffee table books that have once occupied niches yet have pro-actively branched out, Lars Müller’s focus has been set on seeking growth within his chosen niche without compromising an iota.
By setting limitations and parameters through his idiosyncratic approach to editing, which is never meant to be self-serving but based on a thesis as a starting point to then venture towards pleasing the audience by illustrating the argument with the respective subject’s work, the books are imbued carefully calibrated content a reader will understand and absorb autonomously: Lars Müller intrigues readers with the questions he subtly raises.
If we had to define a common denominator of Lars Müller’s recent releases, i.e. Theo Deutinger’s Handbook of Tyranny, Akris – A Century in Fashion and Protest. Eine Zukunftspraxis along with his portfolio of timeless long-sellers, it would be the fact that the foci are set on creating order within what could easily end up in a visual chaos.
Given the aforementioned, Lars Müller is a designer as much as a publisher with the books being documentary instruments subject to changing functions but never to not gaining constantly new relevance, thereby not necessarily pleasing the masses but contributing to the knowledge and beliefs of opinion-leaders.
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Words by AW.
Photos courtesy of Lars Müller Publishers.