Published (roughly) once a year, Flat Out is an independent print magazine that enacts multiple genres of architectural criticism through fifteen recurring, fictitious characters. In each issue readers will find a series of columns—essays, exposés, memoirs, letters, pitches, illustrations, conversations, vignettes, and polemics—authored by a rotating cast of undercover writers and designers. Character portraits by a different artist are commissioned for every issue.

We invite the brave, the curious, and the skeptical alike—architects, artists, critics, curators, designers, illustrators, journalists, scholars, students, and lovers of design culture in general—to participate in untimely dialogues across diverse positions and personalities. In a world preoccupied with individualism, manufactured urgencies, and real time metrics, we strive to go against the grain, reinvigorating architectural culture—one unlikely voice at a time.

Like all good magazines, we have intermittently appeared, disappeared, and reappeared. We procrastinate, we discard, we get distracted, we do different things, move on, and leave things for later, all in anticipation of another time. Suffice it to say we’re still around. And we hope you are too.

Flat Out is published by Flat Out Inc., a 501(c)3 not-for-profit organization registered in the state of Illinois. Support the magazine with a tax-deductible donation here.