The first issue of airea was born during the Covid lockdown, when Stuttgart's restaurants, cafés, and bars were shuttered and the people who ran them were fighting to survive. The magazine's response was characteristically direct: it published a recipe book featuring dishes from the city's favourite gastronomes, photographed with a deadpan humour that made the whole thing feel less like a charity project and more like a love letter written in food. The message was simple — bring Stuttgart's restaurants home — and the city responded.
The second issue turned its attention to music. Wie klingt Stuttgart? — How does Stuttgart sound? — became the guiding question for an issue built around long-form interviews with musicians, promoters, venue owners, and cultural figures from a city whose music scene is chronically underreported. Stuttgart is not Berlin. It is not Hamburg. It does not have the mythology or the media attention. What it does have is a diverse, stubborn, and quietly thriving creative community that deserves to be documented on its own terms, and airea set out to do exactly that.
The magazine distinguishes itself from other city publications through its refusal to play nice. The editors describe their approach as tough images and provocative texts designed to make Stuttgart think. There are no classic advertising placements. The photography is entirely original, shot with strong visual concepts behind every image. Information is passed on uncensored — a word that carries weight in a German media landscape where local publications often depend on the goodwill of the businesses they cover.
What drives airea is a conviction that the people and places that make Stuttgart interesting need active support, not passive documentation. The magazine wants to create awareness that without that support, the city's best cultural assets — the small venues, the independent restaurants, the musicians who play to half-empty rooms on Tuesday nights — will disappear. It is advocacy journalism wrapped in striking design, made by people who clearly love their city enough to be honest about what it risks losing.
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