If Found, Please Return To: Zaha Hadid

Architizer News

If Found, Please Return To: Zaha Hadid

February 27, 2012

From the Zaha Hadid edition of Moleskine’s Inspiration and Process in Architecture Series

Not too long ago, we came across Wendy MacNaughton’s illustrations of how she imagined Leonardo da Vinci’s personal Moleskine notebook would appear, filling the white of the page with an endearingly hurried to-do list to remind the ultimate Renaissance man to “draw Milan” and calculate the measurement of Italy’s courtyards and suburbs. The charmingly haphazard scribbles and sketches reminded us of how the notebook, or the sketchbook, has long been an elemental tool in the creative process, absorbing one’s thoughts, observations, and expressions and becoming an active site for cognitive connections. What better medium, then, is there to capture the elusive concepts of inspiration and process in architecture?

From the BOLLES + WILSON edition

With this in mind, Moleskine began to investigate the relationship between the architect and “the white paper,” with the aim of tracing out the “cognitive geography” of architects such as Zaha Hadid, BOLLES + WILSON, Giancarlo De Carlo and Alberto Kalach. Though designated as monographs, the books in the ‘Inspiration and Process in Architecture’ series ride on their association with Moleskine’s established line of blank notebooks. These books thus map out the process linking an idea to a realized project, leaving the interpretive gaps, spaces and room for free association that would have confronted Zaha Hadid (or Leonardo da Vinci, for that matter, who historian Toby Lester confirmed to have carried around a small notebook hanging from his belt). Moleskine’s special edition clothbound books are a stimulating alternative to the ubiquitous coffee book table and likewise a noteworthy “celebration of the everlasting power of free hand sketching even in the AutoCAD era.”

[All images via Moleskine]