Studio Tillack Knöll

“60 Jahre Schöne Bücher” (60 Years of Beautiful Books) celebrates more than 90 books from six decades of outstanding book design awarded by @stiftungbuchkunst since 1966. The selection presents exceptional examples of design, concept and production, tracing 60 years of changing approaches to typography, materials, manufacturing and the book as a designed object, while offering a special insight into the foundation’s archive.

The exhibition architecture takes the Euronorm container EG 43/32 as a readymade exhibition object and extends it with custom-designed aluminium lids, turning the standardized storage object into a modular display system. Different lid configurations allow the books to be presented flat, tilted or upright. Arranged chronologically and in stacked formations, the crates create a spatial archive of six decades of book design, based on a selection by an independent curatorial committee of experts (see below).

The books are not intended to remain untouched: visitors are explicitly invited to pick them up, browse through them and experience their typographic, material and craft qualities firsthand. The exhibition is on view from September 5 to November 1, 2026 @museumangewandtekunst, and is part of @wdc2026.

Curated by:
@jonas_deuter
Curator, @museumangewandtekunst

Oliver Elser
Curator, @architekturmuseum

@bennohvl
Junges Literaturhaus, @literaturhausfrankfurt

Ralf de Jong
Professor of Typography, @folkwang_uni

Anne Sauer
Author / @fuxbooks

Stefanie Schelleis
Head of Production, @hanserliteratur

Nora Schröder
Editor / Production Manager, @seemann_henschel_verlagsgruppe

Wanda Spangenberg
@buecherbogen_berlin

Joachim Unseld
Publisher, @frankfurter_verlagsanstalt
Chairman of the Board, Stiftung Buchkunst

Creative direction and exhibition identity:
@studiotillackknoell @sventillack @steffenknoell

Exhibition planning:
@studiotillackknoell @sventillack @steffenknoell @johanneshucht

Prototyping:
@studiotillackknoell @sventillack @steffenknoell @marynazevako

Typeface:
Theinhardt, Optimo

[1] Detail of a slanted aluminium lid displaying Petra Lejeune’s Stadtpark–Parkstadt (1982).

#graphicdesign #exhibitiondesign #selectedwork

[2] Exhibiti