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Design Category
Book design, 2003
Design firm
Pentagram (New York, New York)
Collection
(2004) 50 Books/50 Covers of 2003
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This book was published to accompany a major retrospective at the Whitney Museum of American Art. The book design echoes the architects’ work, which examines ideas of contextualization, surveillance and the public/private space. The design brings to the foreground the construction of the book as a physical object and recontextualizes the projects by showing them in a sequence of portfolios that encourage readers to see much of this previously published work in a new way. The use of a French-fold binding gave us a chance to create an actual subtext on the underside of the book, and the perforations down the folds encourage readers to literally tear the book open and deconstruct its sequencing. The imagery on the underside of the pages features images from a Diller + Scofidio project (“Facsimile”) that interlaces fictional episodes with live footage to confuse the boundaries of real and simulated events.
“Not formal excellence, but the urgency of the content drives the design of this book. [It’s a] hybrid between a catalog and the sourcebook of the architects, allowing a view behind the curtain by opening the perforated pages.” Lars Müller