‘Arquitectura com Autor’, is a book commissioned for Guimarães when it was the European Capital of Culture (2012). In the research stage we carefully went through a vast archive of original documents pertaining to a group of architects that inhabited and worked in the city of Guimarães between 1937 and 1970. The archive consisted of piles of papers and material from projects developed during those four decades.
The basic content of this book — sketches, architectural plans, notes and essays — was so powerful in its raw form that we decided to leave it almost as it was, trying to replicate the spirit of the archives. We used different types of papers, cut in different sizes, essentially replicating the look and feel of an original project file. For each group of architects there is a small file which can be separated from the book and read as a stand alone piece. The folded binding was the solution that made the separation possible. The object results in a sculptural edition with many different layers, carefully organized so as to better communicate the featured work and its authors. Through this book, this inspiring archive was taken out of storage and into the homes of architecture lovers.
