If there was one book among this year’s submissions that was so obviously right for binding with what is known as an open spine, it was surely this carefully considered volume about artist Marjan Teeuwen’s imposing photographic series Destroyed House. Teeuwen strips and demolishes houses and then uses the material thus acquired to create new spatial sculptures, which she then photographs. As a spectator, you find yourself deprived of almost any sense of proportion. Teeuwen’s modus operandi returns in the design and production of the book: apart from the open spine, the book block has not been trimmed on all sides, the effect of which is that the fore-edge is uneven, and even the text pages – on the horror vacui principle – are typographically completely bricked up.

 

 The cover image is just a little too illustrative and not in harmony with the interior of the book. We were also unable to find a truly convincing argument for using so many different kinds of paper, unless it was that it facilitated imitation of different sorts of building material. On the other hand these various papers are fantastically well glued together – quite an achievement with such disparate material. And finally the whole thing is so unbelievably well lithographed that the already pin-sharp images appear almost three-dimensional. As if you could walk straight inside it.