Photo by Alexander Grabowski. License: All Rights Reserved.
As Danish architectural studio Henning Larsen celebrated 60 years of practice in 2019, they presented their first monograph: It begins with curiosity, a book that explores how architecture shapes the communities, contexts and cultures that define our lives.
The design of the book (Sam Sandvig Hosman x Henning Larsen) comes from the idea of unboxing a gift. The red dust-jacket wrapped around the textile hardcover tempts the user to unwrap and open the book. A traditional hardcover balances the playful treatment of photography, allowing no two architectural projects to be treated the same and thus supporting the unique context of each project.
Like a building, It begins with curiosity is a book built up of a sequence of spaces: Past, Present, and Future. These three sections include imagery and text about Henning Larsen, voiced by either staff or outside writers close to the practice, such as architectural historian Hans Ibelings and Kent Martinussen of the Danish Architecture Center.
Content from the hands of people at Henning Larsen is set in various weights of the modern san-serif typeface Proto Groteskfrom Production Type (incl. its monospaced styles). Content by writers outside of Henning Larsen are set in the academic serif typeface Stanleyfrom Optimo. This typographic distinction gives each party a unique voice that eventually comes into dialogue with each other in the epilogue of the book.