Materia

Materia is a magazine with one rule: an issue, an architect. Each volume is a long read on a single figure who shaped the way we build — the vision behind the work, the influences that fed it, the resistance it met, and the mark it left. Issue one, February 2025, is given entirely to Zaha Hadid.

The writing moves between the thinking and the buildings, following an idea from where it started to what it became: the fluidity Hadid recognised in historic Islamic architecture, where colonnades and ornament run on without hierarchy, and then the decisions that turned an awkward, split-level site into a terraced landscape. The stated ambition is an archive rather than a showcase — stories, images and reflections that bring architectural culture within reach of people who are not architects.

The design stays quiet so the subject carries the page. One geometric sans does all the work, from the masthead down to the body, set in a single wide justified column with generous leading and wide margins on a mostly white page. Photography runs full bleed and uninterrupted: the cover gives the entire page to a portrait with the masthead sitting over it. A running footer repeats the magazine, the page and the architect on every spread.