First Blurb Draft

A Bed, a Table and a Chair

A Chair, a Table and a Bed is a publication about the value and perception of the Poortgebouw, which had been squatted in 1980's in South of Rotterdam.

From the beginn of 1980's a new Dutch Law allowed to take over empty buildings by only placing 3 main furniture elements in the space. The chapters in this book The three objects, necessary to squat a building guide the reader through the book. A chair means sitting down together, spending time together. A table means putting things on it, work on it and discuss. A bed means living together. These three objects bring together the current concerns of the Poortgebouw, and how it envolved from a former squat to a legal living community and »cultural institution«

This publication shows a contemporary portrait of the Poortgebouw.

The book contains interviews, documents, essays, reports about the Poortgebouw, referring to its contemporary practice.

Design Concept

The design of the book supports those three concerns as synonyms such as the bed for the graphical grid, the table for the selected paper and the chair for the typography.

Starting with the layout of the publication the grid conquers the spaces page by page of the publication.

Fascinated by the metaphor of occupation, such as using existing places for new alternative living conditions - the goal with the layout is to use acual scanned documents from the Poortgebouw archive and overprint them. Recreating new meanings in the publication. Page by page the new content is taking over more and more space and in the end of the book the original background from the archive documents totally dissapeares.

Followed by the unequal coated paper, glossy on the one and matt on the other side, shows the distinction between two diffenent sides. This relates to the conflict between the inhabitants living inside and outside of the Poortgebouw. The paper combination offers many possibilites for exploring different printing techniques. The glossy side may be laserprinted with images, while the matt page may serve as a space for text, that can be printed with one single color on the risograph.

Just as the three objects in the book act as methaphors, the act as relations for the design too. The Layout refers to the chair with typography, the bed with a grid and the table to a paper.

The typography of the book relates to the Poortgebouw in a more subtile way.