The German Architecture Annual, published by the Deutsches Architekturmuseum (DAM) in Frankfurt am Main, has been documenting the architectural events taking place in Germany for almost 40 years. This year's annual presents a number of interviews with distinguished authors who discuss 22 buildings in Germany shortlisted by a jury for the DAM Preis for Architecture in Germany 2018. In order to make this selection, curators of the museum as well as prominent architects and architecture critics visited around 100 buildings that were nominated for this year's award. The 2018 edition of the annual presents the shortlisted works in greater detail in addition to giving special recognition to the winner of the DAM Preis. The Elbphilharmonie, being an exceptional project, was not eligible for the award but receives a special mention. A separate chapter is dedicated to buildings designed by German architects abroad, two of which are presented in this issue. The book also features two essays. One explores the model used in Hamburg for allocating land, designed to support joint building ventures. The other explores the current boom in architecture for theatre and music venues.

Text in English & German. Johannes Peter Hoelzinger studied architecture at the Stadelschule in Frankfurt am Main from 1954 to 1957. After a residency fellowship at the Deutsche Akademie Villa Massimo in Rome he founded a "planning association for new forms of the environment" in 1965 together with Zero artist Hermann Goepfert, who has since died. One of the most successful results of his work with Goepfert was a new design for the Schlosspark in Karlsruhe on the occasion of the Bundesgartenschau in 1967, which won a major German architectural prize, the Hugo-Haring-Preis. From 1991 until his retirement in 2002 Hoelzinger directed the art and public-space course at the Akademie der bildenden Kunste in Nuremberg. Individualistic and oppositional in comparison to other post-World War II architectural achievements, the design of Hoelzinger's buildings is very distinctive. The playful elements of Postmodernism are as alien to his work as the functionalism of New Building. Because of his association with Hermann Goepfert, Hoelzinger is much more closely connected with the art scene of his time. The integration of art and architecture is a unique feature of his buildings. If we try to assign a category to this "object architecture" (a term he coined himself), we will find less overlap with architecture than with fine art. From the very beginning Hoelzinger saw architecture as an artistic discipline. Light kinetics offered him important new perspectives. Lighting design and the resulting colour changes of white walls play a vital role in his work.