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Dimensions / About

"The printed page bound in a magazine remains a favored means of communication. In a sense outmoded by radio, sky-writing, the spectacular, and television, books and magazines persist on their relatively pedestrian way, expendable yet sufficiently durable."

And so begins Wells Ira Bennett, dean of the (then named) College of Architecture and Design with his introduction to Student Publication 1, a small, formatted 56-page booklet published in the spring of 1955. Following the release of Student Publication 2 that fall, subsequent volumes were titled Dimension and continued to be published semiannually for more than a dozen years before slowly drifting away from the initial architectural content and ending its run in 1967 as an arts journal produced by students from the deparment of art at the college.

Twenty years later, in 1987, a group of architecture students aimed to increase the theoretical discourse within the program and resurrected the original format with an expanded title, producing two consecutive annual volumes. Despite the revolving staff expected of any student publication, oscillating trim sizes, increasing page numbers, recurring topics, and shifting production methods, Dimensions has continued to publish annually. Many of the volumes bear the marks of these and other forces, with the formats often following the two-year cycle of graduating classes and every other volume adjusting the trajectory of the journal.

And yet, despite an even wider array of media competing for our attention, the printed page continues to hold its own and sits calmly as a record of efforts at the college stretching back fifty years. Student Publication 1, like any periodical, as Bennett continued, carries an implicit contract between the publication and the reader with "the first issue [acting as] a down payment on this agreement." The 18 staffs of Dimensions, with the upcoming volume as no exception, continue—50 years on—to honor that original contract with respect, conviction, and tireless effort.
—Christian Unverzagt, postscript to Dimensions 18, 2005