Dirty Old River

This paperback with a glossy brown dust jacket featuring 12 essays penned by the British architect Tom Emerson over 25 years offers considerable variety within its slim form via diverse layouts befitting the individual texts. It begins with an essay in a single-column layout in a serif typeface, followed by the corresponding four-colour photographs on a coated paper. While the typeface and column width remain constant in the next few essays, black-and-white illustrations are added, initially on individual image pages and then integrated into the text body. In later essays, the text column narrows, at times centred on the page, at times laid out symmetrically across a spread, occasionally with further images added, for example in a margin. The constantly changing form reflects the diverse nature of Emerson’s manner of working and writing; as an architect and a professor, he is always searching for new perspectives and linking together different practices. The subtle homogenisation of the different picture materials is an important design achievement that allows the book to function as a cohesive whole. The brown dust jacket with red writing and the rounded, folded-in flaps give the impression of coming from another era, in contrast to the glossy finish. The brown colour also alludes to the book’s title – a metonym for London taken from The Kinks’ song ‘Waterloo Sunset’. Overall, the initial impression is quite mysterious, setting the tone for the book as a whole, which constantly piques readers’ curiosity, sometimes changing so drastically from chapter to chapter that it might almost be a different book.

Editor
Sarah Handelman, London (UK)

Author
Tom Emerson, London (UK)

Design
John Morgan studio – John Morgan, Teresa Lima, Adrien Vasquez, London (UK)

Printing
die Keure, Brugge (BE)

Publisher
Park Books, Zürich (CH)

ISBN
978-3-03860-404-4