“You find yourself in the lobby of a corporate office building on the riverbank of the Main, Frankfurt City. The room has a marble floor and marble walls, opening onto white corridors that look far less polished than the entry hall. Covered with grey carpets that groan from decades of bureaucracy and business routine, they lead into larger halls and small rooms and down into a basement. The space is labyrinthine and it is full of The Whistle. Who or what is The Whistle? It’s admittedly hard to contain but amongst other things it includes a number of materials, objects, relations, names and places. What is their story?”

—excerpt from Jenny Nachtigall’s contribution

In 2021, on occasion of the eponymous Städelschule graduation exhibition taking place September 3rd—19th, we designed the publication The Whistle. The book features documentation of each of the graduates’ works, as well as additional visual and written contributions by some of their professors and coordinators. In the book, there is no hierarchy, with no distinction made between students and professors in the sequence. We liked the idea that each contribution is equally important.

• (a) Frankfurt school
• office aesthetics
• easily overlooked—blending in
• interventions
• flat ceilings and hierarchies
• beige-brown
• bureaucracy and business routines