20-01-14 // BERND UPMEYER TALKS ABOUT MONU IN THE HONG KONG-BASED MAGAZINE MILK X

The Hong Kong-based monthly art, design and lifestyle magazine MILK X talked with Bernd Upmeyer about MONU Magazine. MILK X has a monthly print run of 300.000 copies and is distributed in China, Taiwan and Hong Kong.

The following interview is published in MILK X’s January 2014 issue:

MILK X: How did you come up with the name for the magazine?
Bernd Upmeyer: At the beginning we had several ideas for the name. But as the magazine was originally conceived as a way to keep in touch and to continue the debates that I and a student colleague of mine had during our studies – in which the urban scale had always been the basis and common ground of all our discussions – the term “urbanism” came up, which eventually led to the simple title “Magazine ON Urbanism” and its acronym “MONU”. We also felt that in an increasingly globalized world, topics such as architecture should be discussed as part of a wider and more complex field – that of urbanism.

MILK X: When was the 1st issue published? How long did it take from you to go from nothing to printing?
BU: I graduated from the faculty of architecture in 2002 and MONU’s first issue was published in June 2004, almost ten years ago. As the magazine appears twice per year the 20th issue will be released in April 2014. But it took around one year from the first ideas to the printing of issue #1 entitled “Paid Urbanism” which investigated how cities are shaped by government spending and how a Kafkaesque web of bureaucracies constantly recreates and resuscitates our urban landscapes. So the first ideas were created in spring 2003 and later manifested during a trip to New York in summer 2003…

…read the entire interview in Publications.