Abstract:
The book form inherently has within it the notion of the archive: it records experience and serves as a document itself. Tim Guest suggests, in his introduction to Books by Artists, that the documentary function is one of the four main thematic elements of artists’ books. Books that document categorise larger elements, to make sense of situations. This paper surveys the repository quality of books, specifically the documentation of event, place, journey and interior space. It then goes on to explore this achival role of the book, as housing post factum documentation, in the context of teaching architecture and landscape architecture design studios. Within design, the use of the word documentation predominantly refers to representations that are made to ‘get to’ a design. These drawings are a tangible representation of a proposal that has no tangible existence. Hence, the scheme comes into being via this set of drawings. This leads to a predominance of one form of drawing, producing and, therefore, thinking within design education. Documents that interpret the ‘existing’, that is, whose subject-matter precedes the design process, are less dominant within design teaching. Through the use of case studies, this paper demonstrates the generative role of post factum documentation as manifest in the book form. Design students use documentation to interpret, curate, compile and edit their work, and their thinking. The book highlights these acts within the design process and becomes suggestive of an alternative format for housing these ideas. Further to its repository qualities, the book offers a 1:1 scale object with which students work. The book is physically made, and held in the hands, closely and intimately, while the pages are turned. The book offers a tangible technique, process and object through which students can design; that is, they are thinking through the format of the book. This changed format insists that the students reinvestigate the haptic relationship of image and text, narrative and sequence. This paper examines artists’ books as offering an alternative, complementary representation to be explored as a new means of investigating spatial interpretations and propositions in three-dimensional forms. The documentary and reflective role of the book is reinvigorated as a site of innovation and which opens new territories for spatial practice.