Parallel Orders of Architecture (2024)

Parallel Orders of Architecture (2024)
Tony Broad
Box with illustrated paper over boards with title board pastedown on top; enclosing three volumes. First volume: double-sided accordion with single- and triple panel inserts. Second volume: pop-up between illustrated paper over boards with magnet closure. Third volume: pop-up within French-fold box covered with illustrated paper over boards with magnet closure. Box: H137 x W413 x D45 mm. First volume: H130 x W110 x D30 mm. Second volume: H130 x W120 mm. Third volume: H130 x W120 x D38 mm. First volume: 60 panels. Second volume: spiral pop-up. Third volume: 4-layer pop-up. Unique. Acquired from the artist, 23 July 2025.
Photos: Books On Books Collection.

Tony Broad’s Parallel Orders of Architecture (2024) consists of three differently structured volumes enclosed in a handmade illustrated box. The first is a double-sided accordion with single- and triple-panel inserts on both sides. The second is a single-panel pop-up book. The third is a variant on the tunnel book. With the raised outlay on its cover and the platformed interior, the box offers yet another order of structure that runs in parallel with the architectural orders from which Broad draws his inspiration.

Top of cover and interior of box.

The three volumes placedd atop box cover; empty interior of box.

The three works: accordion, pop-up, and modified tunnel book.

The kaleidoscope of perspective and viewpoints offered in the accordion volume echoes the effects of Giambattista Piranesi’s Carceri d’invenzione (1745-61), especially those in the second edition. Where Piranesi invented his architectural fantasies with pen and burin, Broad relies on collage with reproductions and on book structure. For the collage work, he reproduces prints from Perspective (1604-05) by Jan Vredeman de Vries and A Parallel of the Orders of Architecture (1936) by Charles Normand.

Broad’s sources of inspiration and images: left column, Charles Normand’s A Parallel of the Orders of Architecture; right column, Vredeman de Vries’ Perspective.

The accordion’s panels and its inserts play with Normand’s and Vredeman’s illustrations to generate labyrinthine and impossible structures. Staircases disappear. Valley folds sometimes reinforce, sometimes defeat, vanishing points. Arches wrap over mountain folds, coming forward and receding at the same time. Cutouts and notches in the panels multiply the views, but what can be viewed through the cutouts are parts of other panels whose perspectival lines sometimes extend, sometimes clash with, those of the framing cutout.

Front and rear views of the extended accordion book.

Center: valley fold reinforcing the vanishing point. Left and right: cutouts giving onto contrasting views.

Arches wrapping over mountain folds. Notch emphasizing horizon line.

The placement of single- and triple-panel inserts adds additional asymmetry. On the front of the accordion, moving from left to right, we have an insert sequence of triple-triple-single-triple-single. On the reverse side, moving in the same direction, we have a sequence of single-triple-triple-triple. Whether perceived by turning the accordion pages codex-style or viewing their extension from above, the asymmetry of the inserts runs parallel to a symmetry of recurrent spreads and a mirror-image symmetry created by image reversal.

Asymmetry of panel inserts seen from above.

Mirror-image symmetry.

The second and slimmest of the three books turns attention to columns, with its front cover displaying half of an inverted base of a Composite Order column alongside half of a capital of an Ionic Order column. When the magnetically sealed front and back covers are prized apart, a complete Ionic capital pops up, or at least the suggestion of one created by the joining of cross-sections of two volutes.

Second volume displayed against a background of the first volume.

Ionic capital pop up.

The third volume, displayed here against the first volume extended, highlights the Corinthian Order with the acanthus leaves and stalks that decorate its capitals.

Third volume displayed against background of the first volume.

When the magnetically sealed French fold cover opens, the Corinthian capital appears in two halves that will spread apart to reveal in tunnel-book fashion a headless Greek or Roman statue. The double visual pun on the leaf-covered capital hiding the caput-less but still well-endowed fig-leafless statue adds to the delight at the tunnel book’s action.

The Corinthian capital.

The Corinthian capital split to reveal a caput-less and figleaf-less statue.

The views available by rearranging the accordion book on its own or by arranging displays with the other two books seem endless. Having received the

Broad’s plinth box and three artist’s book structures underscore his parallels of symmetry and asymmetry, his visual puns, and his originality. Parallel Orders of Architecture deserves its own slowly rotating plinth to offer maximum.

Recipient of the UK Society of Bookbinders’ John Purcell Award, 1st Prize, in 2024,

Chaos (2023)

Chaos (2023)
Tony Broad
Box: H200 x W170 x D70 mm. Modified flagbook: H145 x variable W90-180 mm. 44 folds. Unique. Acquired from the artist. 23 July 2025.
Photos: Books On Books Collection.

Similar to the paradox of symmetry and aysmmetry in The Parallel Orders of Architecture, Broad’s next work offers us chaos — simultaneously contained and exploding, bound and unbound, intact and shattered, in color and black-and-white, linear and cyclical, dark and translucent. It contrasts a derelict pier (Hotwells Dock in Bristol) with a working pier (parallel to Glaisher Street, upstream from Deptford Creek, London).

Front cover and back cover.

Broad blends artist’s book structures in Chaos. An accordion of translucent parchment anchors the construction from the front cover to back cover. From either end, another accordion, cut on a slant, overlays the translucent accordion. Both the overlying and underlying accordions depict the working London pier. Images of the derelict Bristol pier occupy the orange-tinted center. Midway to that center, the overlaid accordion yields place to a modified flag book structure, which eventually takes over the center of the book.

Chaos extended.

Details of the darker cut accordion folded over the lighter parchment accordion.

The point at which the layered accordions shift into a four-row flag book.

The flag book structure is well-suited to weaving multiple impressions together. The layered accordions build up to this ingeniously with multiple impressions of their own. Their images of the working pier are not aligned, so already we have multiple impressions. Also, from the center of the book, we have a split-view perspective, looking out to the end of the pier simultaneously on the left and on the right.

Split-view perspective. Detail from front cover moving right; detail from back cover moving left.

After the two layered accordion books become a four-row flag book, Broad introduces another effective transformation. As the structure approaches the center, a horizontally folded flag replaces the single-sheet flag in each of the four rows. In addition to intensifying the imagery, the combination draws further attention to the downward view into the water and the outward view to the end of the working pier.

The point at which the single-sheet flag shifts to a horizontally folded flag.

Broad does not stop there. At the center of the book, where the orange-tinted images of the derelict pier appear, he introduces angular folds and cuts. These have the effect of chaos exploding from the center of the book.

Harmonic chaos, chaotic harmony?

Finally, Chaos comes with an envelope of offcut shards to be scattered as display permits. Some of the shards bear the words from the book’s outside back cover, which gives the overall structure and its contrast of the two piers an enigmatic emotional coloring. The viewer wonders whether the author/artist once stood at the end of the now derelict pier and now stands in dreams at the end of the working pier.

Photo: Courtesy of the artist.

36 Days of Type (2019)

36 Days of Type (2019)
Tony Broad
Accordion with hardcover and raised letter Q. 110 mm square, D20 mm. [38] panels. Acquired from the artist, 23 July 2025.
Photos: Books On Books Collection.

A welcome addition to the collection’s artists’ books inspired by the alphabet.

Key of D, electric e, flourishing f, and geometric g.

Holographic H, incandescent i, blue j, and kingly k.

Fuzzy 5, sigma 6, sleepy 7, and octo-legged 8.

Further Reading

“Alphabets Alive!“. 19 July 2023. Books On Books Collection.

“Architecture“. 12 November 2018. Books On Books Collection.

“Celebrating the 250th Anniversary of Steingruber’s Architectural Alphabet“. 1 January 2023. Books On Books Collection.

“Hedi Kyle’s The Art of the Fold: How to Make Innovative Books and Paper Structures“. 24 September 2018. Books On Books Collection.