Mongrel Rapture is a monograph on the work of ARM Architecture. In just over sixteen hundred pages, the book chronicles and examines 30-odd-years of work from this critically, culturally and commercially significant architecture practice through archival and new material. The book was designed over three years, in close collaboration with ARM. Mongrel Rapture is many kinds of book at once—hymnal, illuminated manuscript, index, novel, journal, monograph, zine, pamphlet. The form of the book owes much to the work it’s in the act of capturing: the diverse, obsessive, relentless and involved work of ARM. But like the prevalence of construction photos in this book, much of its design is also about its own book-ness: the requirements of a sixteen-hundred-and-sixteen page book, the physicality of such a thing, the particular colour and thin-ness of the paper, the single thumb index, the rounded spine, its drape when open in your hands.

Since its release, Mongrel Rapture has been lauded with a number of awards. In June 2015 it won the Victorian award for architecture in the media from the Australian Institute of Architects, and a pinnacle award from the Australian Graphic Design Association—the highest honour awarded by that organisation. In 2016, it won its category in the Australian Book Designers Association awards, was also awarded the Designers’ Choice Book of the Year by the ABDA membership, and was named as one of the 50 books of the year in Design Observer’s 50 Books | 50 covers competition.

Finally, a perceptive and engaging review of Mongrel Rapture by artist Callum Morton was published in Australian Design Review, and documentation and discussion of the book formed a substantial part of a Reputations Profile on me published by Eye Magazine in 2016.

Notes

• 1616pp book
• Printed on 50gsm uncoated cream bible paper; 1, 2 or 4 colour; section sewn, leather bound, foil stamped cover
• Type: Union and Larish Neue (both designed and distributed by Radim Peško), Stanley (designed by Ludovic Balland and distributed by Optimo), and Not Ashton’s, Raggatt’s, nor McDougall’s Handwriting
• Published by the brave souls at Uro Publications