Contemporary Architecture Monographs As Design Objects

Monograph is an essential form in the worldwide circulation of architects for self-promotion, self-display, and archiving, besides acting as a social and cultural catalyst that produces knowledge and discourse. The issue still remains undertheorised with only a few literature posing critical questions. This paper traces graphical, contextual, and formal dimensions of monograph. Using narrative qualitative research method, it analyses the first and the last monographs of the contemporary Dutch architectural office MVRDV. This office was chosen due to its radical break from the conventional praxis of monographs, which has been established since the twentieth century, in terms of form, content, medium, and genre. With their heterogeneous, pluralistic, and participatory approach, MVRDV’s monographs do not emerge as a chronological record of architectural works, but as an extension of analysis, data, life, and experience. Being design objects and discursive mediums, they continuously deconstruct and reconstruct textual and visual spaces of architecture