Friday 17 August 2012

Ten Books on Architecture Part 3

Two books based on the Turkish Map Fold, Brunelleschi and Queenslander



Queenslander is a pretty standard multi-paged Turkish Map Fold book.  I chose the structure because in this book I wanted to include floor plans, pictures of a timber old Queensland house being built, a drawing, and to tell how many of these houses were War Service Homes, built for men who had served in WWI. This book tells of one particular house that used to be called Clutha.



I like the way this book looks like a little house when it is closed and I used some wood veneer paper (papier bois) for the covers.


Brunelleschi refers to the dome of Florence Cathedral, which was an outstanding engineering achievement which combined Roman Construction techniques with Gothic rib vaulting principles.

Instead of folding the paper with the cross point in the centre, I folded it off centre

 

and ended up with a shape like this


which was then cut to the shape I wanted


White PVC ribs/covers were cut to size and the edges were sanded to make them smooth and rounded


and the folded pages were sandwiched and attached one by one between the ribs.


The cathedral and its interior are decorated with green and white marble and I wanted to reflect this in the piece.  I cut circles of green paper which were to be overlaid with circles of white paper containing the texts and cutouts of details from the cathedral and interior of the dome.  These pages were folded into a standard Turkish map fold and the green pages were fitted into place and attached to the book and then the white pages were fitted and attached.



The patterns used for the white cutout sections were things like the opening of the lantern looking upwards, the decorative pattern of arches, and the rectangular green and white marble pattern - shown in perspective, and fitting for  Brunelleschi as he was responsible for formulating the laws of linear perspective.




In the next post I will talk about two perspex books, Mies van der Rohe and Pei.

8 comments:

ronnie said...

these are amazing helen! (I think I fancy the queenslander the best -but that's possibly a result of nationalist fervour!) --- I can't believe the structures you come up with --- and the combination of materials --- just a poem!

Janine Whitling said...

wow, awesome, again. my sentiments exactly as to what Ronnie said!

Amanda said...

My goodness Helen, these books are getting more impressive by the post. You have an amazing talent for folded structures and for modifying them to express exactly what you want them to express. No wonder Pratt wanted to buy these!

pennypeckham said...

Wow, these are amazing Helen. I love the way the structures so beautifully reflect the content.

dinahmow said...

Thank you, Helen. I assumed (only fools make assumptions!)that the white elements were also paper.
I have played with paper-and- card, but was not happy with the disparity.I see, now, that using a completely different element somehow adds balance.

dinahmow said...

Should have read "acheives" not "adds"...oops!

Helen M said...

Thanks everybody for your comments. I love playing around with the Turkish Map fold and can't help myself when it comes to folded structures......

claude said...

thank you for your good ideas