Binding architecture: Drawing in the book

Architectural space is usually documented in the form of orthographic projections. These render space in a particular way and hence have limitations and specificity. The artist’s book - that is, a book made as an original work of art, with an artist or architect as author - offers a different mode of presenting documentation and reading representation. This essay explores the relationship between the paper, page and drawing - and the associated elements of a book’s sequence, structure and objecthood - to demonstrate the repercussions for architectural drawing. In doing so, it provides a material presence of architectural representation and offers the book as a site for documentating alternative operations of architecture. Through the writing of Marco Frascari, Catherine Ingraham and Stan Allen, and examples of work by Olafur Eliasson, Jonathan Safran Foer and others, the book is seen to be the site of architectural innovation, opening new territories for practice.