CULTURE

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BMW Group, New York, 2011, English

Nonfiction, Art and Cultural History

Internationally renowned New York Graphic Designer has innovatingly designed CULTURE, a book celebrating over 40 years of BMW Group’s international cultural partnerships and support of hundreds of projects throughout the world.

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Thomas Girst

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The BMW Group celebrated 40 years of cultural commitment in 2011. To mark this occasion, Stefan Sagmeister designed the publication CULTURE, featuring our cultural partnerships. The concept is unconventional: CULTURE is not only a book to browse through, but as it also features an integrated, remote-controlled car, it is a book that can be driven around. A limited edition, it was not available for sale. Each of the 1,488 copies is hand-signed and a unique specimen. Arranged together as a whole, all the book covers would create a 7 x 7-meter square depicting a graphically abstracted image of the legendary BMW “four cylinder” building—the company headquarters in Munich built by Karl Schwanzer in 1972—from a bird’s-eye view. It was all jolly good fun to work with Stefan. The book was awarded many international design prizes and we loved the subtlety as well as the humor of the entire approach. Corporate publications usually only last a few moments, from opening the envelope to throwing them in the dustbin. Our book is a unique work of design that no one who has received it ever wants to part with.

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