ABSTRACT

Field presents points of intersection between architecture, its printed image and artists' books. The idea of bookness is expanded through outlining characteristics and qualities particular to artists' books. The artists' books of the 1960s and 1970s embodied the aspirations of architectural little magazines in explicitly being the site of the process of production. The qualities and characteristics of books and their intersection with architectural drawing and documentation lead to areas of potentiality for the agency of the book within spatial representation. The elements of the page, the frame, multiple pages and sequence, structure, the objecthood of the book, and the act of reading lead to certain possibilities for the book as a site for architectural representation. The paginal quality of the book, and the page's frame, creates a solidification of the conceptual space of the page, and the size and shape of it become significant variables.