John Bezold

This book is an outgrowth of an exhibition of the same name on the architecture of Wiel Arets, which was organized on the occasion of the 23rd anniversary of the firm’s work. The exhibition taught to relay the architecture’ studio’s ideas across a timeline spanning 1983-2010, which combines articles, interviews, and essays by the architect and architecture and design critics and scholars, against a visual backdrop of the work, shown in renderings and photography. The book–the exhibition’s catalogue–collects, in chronological order, texts written by, about, and interviews with the architect; his own texts are set in a single column, with the remaining pages set in two. Typography reflects the chronology of its content; dates form chapters, and within each year a series of texts and images of built projects combine to create a timeline. Each chapter’s title has been graphically deconstructed on spreads of silver printed paper, slightly translucent, with each year becoming whole as the chapters, or years, progress, with 2010 completing this de- and re-construction. Images unfold along this horizontal timeline of words, silently streaming through text–with all photography by the German photographer Jan Bitter–some of it custom commissioned for this publication. The book is nearly entirely set in the font Aperçu, which was released in the same year of the book’s publication, by the Colophon Foundry–a type foundry based in the UK. This book would go on to win the 2010 Best Dutch Book Design Award, bestowed for exceptional design, editorial, and production quality.

Read a review of the book from July 2011.