Jack Belter
Building Books
Architecture and printed matter are historically bound practices. The proliferation of architecture as a discipline is predominantly due to the advancements of print technology. The printing of Leon Battista Alberti’s De Re Aedifactoria initiated the belief that architecture was a medium to be written about, intellectualized, and discussed among the wealthy. Books became a vehicle for the dematerialization of architecture, and with that allowing the practice of architecture to reach far beyond the built environment. “Architecture did not derive from the need for shelter… Rather, architecture arose from the same impulse that gave birth to writing.” (Middleton 1984) The relationship between books and architecture takes form in many ways, from Labrouste’s Bibliothèque Sainte-Geneviève to architecture as written word. The publications of Robert Venturi, Denise Scott Brown, Rem Koolhaas, or Aldo Rossi exemplify the building in written form where the ideas of architecture could materialize through printed matter.
This narrative ignores glaring components of both disciplines. Both engage within a larger network of practitioners, materials, and conventions that allow for their production. Books like architecture are material. The construction of them can be looked through the lens of the architect where the book’s construction, convention, or material are opportunities to tie itself to the built environment. In doing so the stories of both architecture and book production conflate.
Building books investigates this conflation as a way of understanding how both printed matter and architecture physicalize their histories, conventions, and material qualities. The thesis, a collection of books prioritizes their form and concept to engage how printed matter configures architecture, and in doing so recontextualizes the role of the practitioner and technician within the production of architecture.
Model Photo
Model Photo
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