Moleskine has released two new titles in its Inspiration and Process in Architecture book series, which explores the design processes of international architects.
The inspiration and the process are two factors underlying all design arts and specifically architecture: the Inspiration and Process in Architecture collection, curated by Francesca Serrazanetti and Matteo Schubert, came into the architecture publishing scene in 2012 to explore the hidden stages of the architect's work and to show the "behind the scenes" of a profession that often reveals only the outcome of a long process.
The series - which already includes books devoted to the work of Zaha Hadid, Giancarlo De Carlo, Bolles+Wilson, Alberto Kalach, Cino Zucchi and Wiel Arets - has now grown to include Studio Mumbai and Dominique Perrault. Two different points of view on architecture and reality offer the reader a glimpse of the notebook pages of two major architects located at antipodes of the planet, revealing the most intimate aspects of their work.
The volume dedicated to Studio Mumbai, a well-known Indian group of architects and craftsmen, shows the development of Bijoy Jain's own mind-process as well as the collective dialogue through which each project evolves. Dialogues unfold through study sketches made by both Bijoy Jain and the Studio's carpenters, as well as full-scale models and photographs taken on journeys for study and inspiration for future work, showcasing a critical part of their design process.
Dominique Perrault's "notebook" shows a collection of materials realized by the DPA office on the occasion of two international competitions for museum buildings. An opportunity to demonstrate how even unrealized projects are a great opportunity for experimentation, these courses of research are told through sketches, models, notes and diagrams.
The books' structure - as in the whole Inspiration and Process in Architecture series - is organized in two sections: "Writings", which include critical essays and an interview with the architect, and "Drawings", which include images taken from personal notebooks and design materials specially extracted from their drawers, made with all kinds of artistic media, mostly manual, but not excluding a few forays into digital.