Simon Twose
Drawing / Building / Cloud /
“This thesis is a reflective project, drawing from more than twenty five years of work, spanning from student work through to architectural and academic practice. It presents this work as a cloud of process. The cloud is thought of as source material for a study in practice-as-drawing; looking into practice’s ability to have the open-ness of a sketch."
Simon's PhD document collapses his cloud of practice into a book. It is a landing site for images and text picked up in traversing the cloud. The book is also in many separate parts and can be rearranged, allowing other forms and associations to be drawn.”
Drawing/Building/Cloud/ consists of three main document types that are held together by a robust dust jacket.
The main publication explores the connections and parallels existing in Simon Twose’s architectural and art practices. He examines the points where projects and processes blur — cataloging and analysing these interactions — assigning properties and virtual mechanisms explaining both physical, spacial and emotional states.
The cover features one of these virtual mechanisms; the 'Build/Draw Friction wheel'. /Cloud/ is written with slashes either side of it to pay homage to Damisch’s use of the word in A Theory of /Cloud/ (Damisch 2002). Damisch develops the notion of /cloud/ as a theory that merges literal cloudiness, interpretative possibility and perceptual registers in painting.
We selected a soft cover to help the publication feel malleable and to reduce the physical barrier between it and the project documents that follow.
In response we created the brand focusing on two of these key points in response we created the brand focusing on two of these key points
Images play a essential roll in supporting the manuscript, flowing through the spreads illustrating and connecting concepts and the hypothesis explored in the text. The foldout section illustrates (starting at page 30) this /cloud/ section is an assemblage of images from selected case studies. It is to introduce the idea of my practice as a cloud of source material with multiple elements at play in its ‘transformable form’. The dissertation is structured as a series of traverses through the cloud of source material.
To help provide context to the often abstract concepts, ten project cards containing a single image and a short description are inserted into the publication at key point, introducing the final outputs of these projects.
Ten individually bound project self-cover booklets are designed to showcase the final outputs. The layout of each booklet is simple and restrained to balance the floating all-in approach of the main book. Although separate the Project Booklets share the same stock of the leaves in the main thesis and continue the page numbering sequence to help connect these components.
Individually bound project booklets are designed to showcase the final outputs.
Publication photos by: Jess O'Brien