Publisher: AA publications, BOZAR books
ISBN: 978-1-907896-09-5
Graphic design: Wayne Daly
9781907896095
217 x 330 mm, English

Available here

From the Groeninge Museum to the Arteconomy Villa, the buildings and projects of 51N4E appear here as the result of a continuous quest to produce work that is autonomous (even personal) and yet radically open to the World in which we live. The necessary paradoxes that these twin ambitions generate also define a certain tension that characterises the work itself. For both the architects themselves and an onlooking audience this tension seems productive, even necessary, in the sense that it creates architectural environments that are clearly defined but still open, ready to be engaged with and used. This book illustrates a series of distinct projects produced over the first decade of 51N4E, and presents them in a deliberately deadpan sequential arrangement, neither chronological nor thematic but simply positioned with texts on the left-hand side and images on the right. As much as allowing the words and pictures to speak for themselves, this structure enables a double reading (consistent with the title of the exhibition that this book accompanies):to focus on and understand individual projects;.or to leaf through the book as if one big portfolio, forgetting the projects and simply looking at everything in a kind of free association - double or nothing.

Brett Steele