For Immediate
Release
125 Kilos of Books
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Histoire et description de
la cathédrale de Cologne.
Sulpiz Boisserée
© Canadian Centre for Architecture, Montréal
Photo Michel Boulet
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Montréal, 17 January 2006 - From 23 March to 30 April 2006 in the Octagonal
Gallery, the Canadian Centre for Architecture presents 125 Kilos of Books.
Celebrating the designation of Montréal as UNESCO World
Book Capital
City for 2005-2006, the
exhibition presents a selection of printed architectural works dating from the
15th century to the present from the CCA's collection in order to provoke
thought about what seems, at first sight, the most banal fact of any book: its
size.
A book's dimensions are only partly determined by the technology of its
production or the physical comfort of its readers. Size is routinely used by
authors and their publishers to indicate value, to justify price, and to
control how and by whom their work is read - whether casually or ceremonially,
individually or in groups, by the rich few or the many poor. Books are big to
convey magnificence, or small to indicate virtue. Their size is also a
function of public and private spaces - the dimensions of warehouses and
bookstores, palace libraries and office desks, horse-drawn carriages and
airplane seats.
Architecture in print has a long tradition of the big book. As in other
disciplines such as human anatomy, this tradition developed because scale
added clarity to the illustrations in a treatise, and kept better faith with
the original drawings. But there are many other reasons why scale rapidly
became a tool, or even a weapon, in the hands of the architect turned author.
Most obviously, perhaps, certain architects and clients have enjoyed pushing
the limits of monumentality in books as in buildings. And although modern
methods of distribution and marketing have severely reduced the scope for
format to be an expressive feature of a book, there are still some notable
examples of self-conscious supersizing to be found on the contemporary market.
By contrast, the builder's manual is traditionally small enough to fit the
literal and metaphorical pocket of its intended audience. And even books that
begin big, if successful, have often been republished in smaller formats so
their message can travel further, at a different price point. As mass
digitization projects lead more and more people to experience words and images
via the homogenizing scale of the computer screen, this exhibition seeks to
retrieve an underexplored element of the physical history of the architectural
book.
The books presented in the exhibition encompass an impressive range of scale
and size, from the smallest, A brief
discourse concerning the three chief principles of magnificent building:
solidity, convenience, and ornament by Sir Balthazar Gerbier
D'ouvilly (London, 1662), measuring 14.2 cm x 9.5 cm x 0.8 cm, to Sulpiz
Boisserée's Histoire et description de la
cathédrale de Cologne (Stuttgart, 1823), a hefty tome more than a
metre in height and weighing 21 kilos!
All works have been selected from the CCA collection, which comprises nearly
200,000 volumes, by the exhibition's curator Gerald Beasley, Director of the
Avery Architectural and Fine Arts Library, Columbia University,
and until 2004, Associate Chief Curator and Head Librarian at the CCA. Mr.
Beasley, who holds a first degree in English Language and Literature from Oxford University
and an M.A. in Library Studies from University
College, London, came to the CCA in 1994. He is a
co-author of the Royal Institute of British Architects (RIBA)'s five-volume
catalogue Early Printed Books, 1478-1840,
which won the prestigious Besterman/McColvin Medal from the Chartered
Institute of Library and Information Professionals in the United Kingdom.
Curator's Talk
On Thursday, 23 March 2006 at 7 pm in the Paul Desmarais Theatre,
exhibition curator Gerald Beasley discusses 125
Kilos of Books.
The Canadian Centre for Architecture is an
international research centre and museum founded on the conviction that
architecture is a public concern. Based on its extensive collections, CCA is a
leading voice in advancing knowledge, promoting public understanding, and
widening thought and debate on the art of architecture, its history, theory,
practice, and role in society today.
The CCA thanks the
RBC Financial Group for its support
of the exhibitions and public programs.
The CCA gratefully acknowledges the generous support of
the Ministère de la Culture et des Communications du Québec,
the Canada Council for the Arts, the Department of Canadian Heritage, and
the Conseil des arts de Montréal.
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Information:
Patrick-J. Poirier
Head, Communications and Media Relations
Tel.: 514.939.7001 ext. 2628
Fax: 514.939.7020
e-mail: [log in to unmask]
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