A Never-Ending Stone

>> A Never-Ending Stone by Laure Catugier will be released at the Vienna Art Book Fair #3 and Info on Books on Thursday, Oct 23, at 20:00 at Café Babette / Sudhaus. <<

For over ten years, Laure Catugier has been creating analogies between music and modern architecture through her project “Architecture Is Frozen Music”. This ongoing work gathers photographs of modernist fragments taken during residencies around the world—including the Middle East, Asia, and Eastern Europe.

A Never-Ending Stone is her first monographic catalog. The title references François Coignet, one of the early inventors of concrete in France, who, in the 1860s, described the material as “a never-ending stone.” He had already recognized its potential for widespread use. Given that modernism is intrinsically linked to the massive use of concrete, the fragmentary images collected during Catugier’s travels—now presented in this catalog—allow us to observe the evolution of construction throughout the 20th century.

Her recent research focuses on the social dimensions of modernism, particularly in relation to collective housing and its evolving norms, spaces, forms, and uses. The modern movement is both fascinating and unsettling: while it championed innovation, it also encouraged a certain authoritarianism, ultimately revealing complicity with colonialism. With concrete as its ubiquitous medium, modernist architecture contributed to a standardization of forms and functions. How, then, do people in disparate cultural and climatic contexts appropriate these uniform spaces? And in light of the current, human-driven climate crisis, how can we reduce the pollution caused by concrete production? Could we consider building based on the quantity of locally available materials, thereby limiting real estate speculation? 

To address these questions in relation to Catugier’s work, the book is divided into three parts: 

“An Unfolding Object”—an essay by Anna-Lena Wenzel, a writer focusing on art and urban space. 
An interview with curator and editor Moritz Küng, who operates at the intersection of art, architecture, and artist book publishing.
A series of image collages specially created for this publication by Laure Catugier.

By superimposing and intersecting lines through collage, Catugier multiplies the potential variations of form. Playing with scale, perspective, and framing, she disrupts the conventional Cartesian coordinates of the x, y, and z axes.

A Never-Ending Stone
Laure Catugier

einBuch.haus, 2025

210 x 260 mm, 104 pp; German, English & French 
Thread binding with hardcover
Interior: Pergraphica Timid grey, 120 g/m2 Magno Volume, 150 g/m2
Cover: Grey bookbinding board 945 g/m2

Concept: Laure Catugier
Graphic design: Dokho Shin
Texts: Anna-Lena Wenzel and Moritz Küng
Translations: Michel Métayer (FR), Nicholas Grindell (EN)
Copy-editing and proofreading: Viola van Beek (DE), Michel Métayer (FR), Meredith Dale (EN)

Printing and binding: Druckerei Braul, Berlin

Edition of 250
ISBN 978-3-9827369-0-7

Supported by the KAI 10 ARTHENA FOUNDATION and the Senate Department for Culture and Social Cohesion