Cora Ashraf and Lisa Stegmeyer are self-described Stadtkinder — city kids who spend their days between the Marienplatz, the Calwer Straße, and wherever Stuttgart’s creative energy happens to concentrate on a given afternoon. In 2020, during the Covid lockdown that shuttered the city’s restaurants, cafés, and bars, they launched airea with an act of practical solidarity: a recipe magazine featuring dishes from Stuttgart’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 to music. Wie klingt Stuttgart? became the guiding question for an edition built around long-form interviews with musicians, promoters, venue owners, and cultural figures from a city whose creative scene is chronically underreported. Stuttgart is not Berlin. It does not have the mythology or the media attention. What it does have is a diverse, stubborn, and quietly thriving creative community, and airea set out to document it on its own terms — with original photography, strong visual concepts behind every image, and information passed on uncensored.
The magazine is as much a pop-up brand as a publication. Ashraf and Stegmeyer have extended airea into products — tote bags, apparel, accessories — all rooted in the same conviction that drives the editorial: supporting Stuttgart’s independent scene means putting your money where your mouth is. There are no classic advertising placements. The photography is entirely their own. The texts are deliberately provocative, designed to make the city think about what it risks losing if the small venues, the independent restaurants, and the musicians playing to half-empty rooms on Tuesday nights disappear for lack of support.
In a German media landscape where most city magazines are sponsored supplements or advertiser-friendly listings guides, airea operates with the freedom of a project that answers to no one but its own neighbourhood. It is advocacy journalism wrapped in striking design, made by two people who love their city enough to be honest about it.
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