How To Bind A Book

I have been teaching myself the art of book binding over the last few weeks, and I am pleased to say that I just completed my first one.  There are a few mistakes, to be expected, but generally I'm pretty happy with how it turned out.  I have to give a big thanks to Sage Reynolds, an artist who has an entire YouTube Channel dedicated to teaching these skills to anyone interested.  Click here to watch his over 90 videos posted on various techniques.  

Step 1.  Cutting the signatures.

Step 2.  Sewing the signatures together.  I used a traditional kettle stitch for my book.  

Step 3. Adding the endpapers and lining the spine.  The spine is reinforced with a special gauze like material and lining paper to give it more structural strength.  

Step 4.  Making the case.  I decided to use a neutral toned book cloth to match the netural end paper, and to create a contrast with the brightly colored images inside.  

The book is a combination of pictures from my trip to Peru and blank pages for sketching and writing.  A free association picture journal..

Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library at Yale

On our class trip to New Haven last week, we stopped by the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library at Yale University.  Its a building I have known for a while and studied in school, but this was my first time seeing it in person.  Seeing a building like this is a reminder to me of how important it is to actually go and visit these buildings we spend so much time talking about.  Looking at photos of a building versus walking around it, in it, getting a sense of the scale, smell, sound and temperature...there's no comparison.  I'm always interested in the fact that some buildings look OK in photos but amazing in person, and then there are some buildings that are really photogenic, but in person aren't that interesting.  (Other examples here and here.)  I was completely taken by surprise upon visiting the Beinecke Library.  Its simply beautiful.  The photos will never capture its full magical properties.   

It was designed by Gordon Bunshaft of SOM, and was a gift of the Beinecke family to Yale in 1963.  The large slices of marble you see in the photo above are actually so thin that they allow a small amount of light to pass through them, providing some natural illumination to the library and still protecting the ancient books inside.

See the light coming through the marble?

Library: All Done

Entrance View

Interior View - Upper Levels

Ground Floor Plan

High Line Level Plan

Process

To see the beginning, click here.

More Library Progress

This is all a work in progress.

Test Ramp Renders

These are some really simple unofficial test renders of the library floor slabs and ramps as they are right now.

Modeled in Rhino and rendered using V-Ray for Rhino.

Next step, facade and structure. And bathrooms.
Click here to read about the concept. And here to see some diagrams.

MVRDV Brabant Library

The music is a bit scary, but this is really cool.


The animation of the never realised plan for a central library for the Dutch province of Brabant. The project ran from 2000 - 2001 and is published in KM3 (Actar, Barcelona) and of course on the MVRDV website.

Library Facade

Just some sketches, ideas, and inspiration.