This paper presents a collaborative practice producing artists' books in the teaching of landscape architectural design. The collaboration arose from a shared scepticism with conventional modes of representation, presentation and assessment; where the design of landscape occurs as an operation of digital terrain, printed onto paper and verbally presented for review. Artists' books, or books made as original works of art, offer an alternative method of working for both students and teachers. The paper is an inquiry into emerging methods of working for students, of teaching, and of collaborating, all of which centre on the role of artists' books as technique, process and object in the teaching of spatial practice. These ideas will be explored through a series of case studies that use artists' books in various ways to teach design, including the book as documenting site analysis, as a generator of design development, as a presentation tool, and the role of hybrid representation. This paper proposes that artists' books offer a lens through which architectural and landscape architectural representation may be examined and critiqued. Artists' books offer a complementary representation to be explored as a new means of investigating spatial interpretations and propositions in three-dimensional form.
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