New Work: ‘Time & Territory’

Domenic Lippa, with design assistant Beatrice Blumenthal, has designed Time & Territory, a book published by the landscape architecture and urban design firm J&L Gibbons to celebrate their 21st anniversary.

The book is a review of the best of the firm’s output to date, presented in the form of a visual essay interspersed with written contributions by a selection of 21 clients, friends and former colleagues.

Lippa has a long-standing, close relationship with J&L Gibbons and has previously consulted the firm on their identity and designed their website.

J&L Gibbons is guided by the personal and unique process of the firm’s founder, Johanna Gibbons. Lippa’s editorial design for the book aims to reflect the interplay between analysis, intuition, thought, process and sustainability that is characteristic of J&L Gibbons’ work.

Time & Territory is contained within a slipcover made from recycled greyboard and has an open-spine binding which reveals the 21 thread-sewn sections that make up the physical construction of the book. The text is divided in to five colour-coded subject areas representing the varying scale of the work: field, lawn, street, region, park and plot. The coloured index pages of these divisions create the stripes of colour visible through the open spine of the book. The physical presence of the book, its interlocking blocks of type and the use of atmospheric photography alongside information graphics and process shots combine to convey a sense of interconnectedness between concept and construction which was taken from the J&L Gibbons approach.

The 241 page, 16 × 19cm book was produced to ISO4001 environmental standards and is printed with vegetable-based ink on bleach-free paper from FSC certified forests. It is typeset in Din.

Time and Territory also features in the November 2007 issue of Creative Review.

Photography by Nick Turner