Monday 10 October 2016

Ten Trinity Square

Ten Trinity Square is one of London’s landmark buildings overlooking the Thames at Tower Hill. Built over a century ago to house the Port of London Authority, it has now been re-developed by the Reignwood Group as an exclusive arrangement of residences, a luxury hotel and private club, all in association with Four Seasons. This book tells the story of the historic building and has specifically been produced to be on display in the atrium of the building on a specially made plinth designed by Daniel Weil of Pentagram.
 
This is certainly the largest book to have ever appeared on this blog and is probably the most impressive I have ever had the pleasure of handling! The size of the book is 615mm square, yep that's right, well over half a metre! As a result, it's more than a bit tricky to photograph, so my apologies - click on the images to bring them up to a better size.
Unsurprisingly, this outsize book is casebound and is covered with Saffiano, which is first grade calf leather with a classical grain.  The cover is embossed and hot foil blocked in metallic gold foil.
As you would expect, there are endpapers. Because of the size of the books, the endpapers have to be over 1.2 metres long!
This is the Chinese language version, which is covered in red, there is a matching English language version which I'll write about another time.  In total there are two editions and twelve copies were produced. Six in English and six in Chinese - an extremely rare and limited run!
The book has 92pages, all printed on Omnia White 200gsm. Omnia is a very bulky paper and that's what a project like this needed, with the size of each page being over half a square metre!

The image reproduction throughout the publication is simply wonderful with both the four colour images, the cool grey pantone special and solid blacks looking great.

Click on images to enlarge
Click on images to enlarge
The bookblock (just the pages) itself is 13mm thick. Below is a detail showing the ribbon.
To give a sense of scale, below are two images with a pencil and a 12inch ruler by the book, which gives you some idea...

Superbly detailed hot foil blocking on the leather is beautiful.
Below is a detail showing the spine. The book is 'quarter bound' with cloth around the spine. Don't forget, the spine you are looking at is 35mm! Rather than using a bookbinding grade greyboard, the internal structure of the case is supported with a material called Promolyte. This is a lightweight alloy which was used to increase the strength, stability and integrity of this huge leather cover. 
Brand identity for the whole project, including this book, is by Pentagram. Design is by John Rushworth and Joe Stephenson. You can see more about the whole project here: http://www.pentagram.com/#/projects/121368
 
Original photography is by Richard Bryant. CGI's by Hayes Davidson and AB Concept.
 
Printing is by Gavin Martin Colournet. It is a stupendous book with stunning production values and it has been produced impeccably. If I was saying anything other than that, then the whole reason for producing this staggering publication to appear on display in the building, would be null and void. It is simply the most stunning book ever!
 
http://www.tentrinitysquare.com/
http://www.reignwood.com/
http://www.pentagram.com/
http://www.gavinmartincolournet.co.uk/
Posted by Justin Hobson 10.10.2016

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