In 1948 Bruno Zevi published Saber ver la arquitectura (Architecture as Space; Zevi, 1981), a key work for understanding architecture as an autonomous discipline, distinct from the other figurative arts with which it is closely bound. What sets it apart, above all, is its capacity to produce space and its immediate proximity to construction technique, politics, humanism and social purpose, among others.
To overcome the difficulty of reading its meanings correctly in purely artistic terms, Zevi called for a method of its own: one attentive to architecture's specific nature, allowing a distinct and exclusive interpretation that would capture its essence more sharply. To this end he proposed a series of mechanisms for representing, assessing and assimilating architectural space, grounded in direct experience and in a proper way of seeing. Knowing how to see would be the founding principle for writing a truly modern history of architecture.
Handcrafted from start to finish, the book crosses paths with its own content. Its layout becomes a kind of collection of found objects that meet on the same page, sometimes in dialogue with one another, sometimes standing alone. Almost hidden, like the invisible cartographies the author describes.
Using a single typeface family, we stitch and link text and image through author's notes, footnotes, titles, subtitles and every other element the syntax allows, generating the object's own cartography so that its form mirrors its content. The bare, exposed binding also lets us play with modesty: the nakedness of a book that conceals multiple maps.
