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informal
Cecil Balmond
with Jannuzzi Smith
Prefaces by Charles Jencks and Rem Koolhaas
Edited by Christian Brensing

Price £29.95, Hardcover, 400 pages, c.470 illustrations, 270 in colour

Printed on Munken Lynx 130gsm, 115 x 186 mm, ISBN 3-7913-2400-4

Publication 7th November 2002

The definitive account of Balmond’s investigative approach to structural engineering

“informal has a typographic elegance that makes it look like no

previous engineering book...its glimpses of a hidden order of things,
of the occult properties of numbers and shapes, suggest it could be
the next Brief History of Time – but with pictures”
Deyan Sudjic, The Observer

“Balmond has, almost single-handedly, shifted the ground in

engineering – a domain where the earth moves very rarely – and
therefore enabled architecture to be imagined differently.”
Rem Koolhaas

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the book’s thesis
The world is changing in social values and its institutions, there is also a breakdown in fixed
ideologies – a more fluid and informal approach is called for. Hierarchies and dogma are being
replaced by interdependence, self help and improvisation are concepts now proposed as new
principles of organisation. informal anticipates this in the design of buildings. Ideas such as local,
hybrid and juxtaposition are taken as providing start points for design in the interrogation of space,
and architecture is viewed as a formative process arising out of a seminal structural logic. Instead
of dumb skeleton there is network – a connective patch through pattern.

The book invites the reader to enter the dialogues between the author and the architects he works
with, sharing the intimacies of the design process through sketches and first principles.

Projects range from a Villa in Bordeaux to a large Transport Interchange in Arnhem, from a large
canopy in Lisbon to the V&A Spiral in London and an Exhibition Centre in Lille, highlighting the
collaborations Cecil Balmond has had with the architects Ben van Berkel, Daniel Libeskind, Rem
Koolhaas, Alvaro Siza and Peter Kulka with Ulrich Königs. What is constant is a search for the
magic in making a form, using numbers, music and mathematics as vital sources. What comes
through ultimately is that the lyric or elegiac is always present, even in that hardest of pursuits to
make a building take shape, defy gravity and be pragmatic. informal captures this essence that
beyond craft and technique there is art and poetry.

Translation of these ideas into tangible book form involved cultural historian and critic Christian
Brensing, who acted as the editor and introduced Balmond to Michele Jannuzzi and Richard Smith.
They in turn provided a seamless innovation of text and image adding to the content another kind
of potent structure.

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the book’s creation
“I was introduced to Michele Jannuzzi and Richard Smith” Balmond says, “as people who would
help me resolve a difficult problem – how to communicate the essence of something.” The
resulting collaboration – a seamless innovation of text and image – mirrors Balmond’s own
creative collaboration with leading architects, a blurring of the boundaries between one discipline
and another.

The book presents Balmond’s unorthodox ideas

through a series of interlinking stories. This
approach enables each story (or chapter) to
focus on a particular aspect of Balmond’s
problem-solving methodology without
replicating the already well-documented
perspective of the architects on each of these
iconic projects.

Stories relating to each project are dispersed throughout the book, each free to graphically
explore its own theme. Counterpoint comes from placing different projects alongside each other.
Pace, tone and emphasis vary to suit content. Design is inspired more by mathematics books and
children’s fiction than by books on architecture or engineering.

initial imposition reconfigured imposition

The production question was how best to reconcile editorial and design intentions with the
publisher’s initial assumptions – the answers helped to define the book as an object. The standard
components of a medium format book of 200 pages printed mostly in two colours (the publisher’s
initial assumption) were dissected and reconfigured to produce a 400 page book the size of a
novel. Some sections employ just one colour, giving opportunity for others to have three or four.

Each project has a ’signature’

colour, thereby visually
reuniting the different
stories. The contents page
and cover map the rest of the
book using these colours.

Underpinning the whole is a typographic treatment designed to relay the simple elegance of
Balmond’s ideas, and to retain the flow of words and doodles of his hand-written manuscripts.
Conventional left, right or centred text settings were abandoned in favour of an ‘internal
alignment’. This allows drawings, photographs and documents to be interwoven, and softens the
hard right angles of the book.

informal has received an award from Stiftung Buchkunst as one of "Die schönsten deutschen
Bücher 2002".

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the book’s projects
The ideas set out in the book are explained through 7 seminal projects that Balmond worked on in
collaboration with architects Rem Koolhaas (OMA), Daniel Libeskind, Alvaro Siza, Ben van Berkel
(UN studio), and Peter Kulka with Ulrich Königs.

“The idea of a table is destroyed. Instead, the dynamic is launch.”

Villa Floriac, Bordeaux: diary of making a box 'fly'

“Let the informal in. Have a syncopation instead of the dull metronomic
one-two repeat of post and beam.”
Kunsthal, Rotterdam: breaking the Cartesian cage

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“We wanted something different, eccentric orbits, a release of the wild
energies that Nature seems so easily to control.”
Sports Stadium, Chemnitz: algorithm versus mimesis

“It was essentially a one storey, shed-like building. But what a shed it
turned out to be.”
Congrexpo, Lille: city within city

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“Does space have to be container-like and neutered to house
works of art?”
V&A Spiral, London: animated geometries

“The mystery is in the unseen calculation of exact balance, of up

versus down.”
Portuguese National Pavilion, Lisbon: structure as a cut in space

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“Layering and folding take over and the concerns of a Newtonian
mechanics fall away.”
Central Station, Arnhem: flow diagram as enzyme

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Cecil Balmond (above left)

Cecil Balmond is an engineer, designer, master builder, mathematician, thinker and writer. His
theory of the informal is grounded in his collaboration over the last 25 years with many notable
architects including Rem Koolhaas, Daniel Libeskind and Alvaro Siza. Charles Jencks remarked,
when asked to list the fifteen most important buildings and projects that were changing
architecture, that “to my amazement, Balmond scores higher than any architect, if the engineer is
credited with partial creation”. Balmond’s recent projects include the Serpentine Gallery Pavilion
with Toyo Ito, and the largest fabric sculpture in the world with Anish Kapoor, recently opened in
the Turbine Hall at Tate Modern.

Balmond was born in Sri Lanka, where he studied at university, before leaving for further
education in England. His interest lies in the genesis of form and the overlap of science with art,
using music, numbers and mathematics as vital sources. He is Saarinen Professor at Yale, was
Kenzo Tange Visiting Critic at Harvard, is a member of the Arup Group Board, and Chairman of
Arup’s Europe Division. He was recently appointed a Fellow of the RIBA and was awarded the
honorary Diploma of the AA. He lives in London.

Balmond’s first book Number 9: the Search for the Sigma Code was also published by Prestel (1998).

Michele Jannuzzi and Richard Smith (above centre and right)

Michele Jannuzzi and Richard Smith are the directors of cross-media design consultants Jannuzzi
Smith and authors of dotlinepixel published by GCE, Mendrisio (2000). They are graduates of the
Royal College of Art in London.

Recent projects include the design and production of Central Saint Martins College of Art and
Design course information (online and printed) and work for Royal Mail on the special stamps
programme. Besides printed material they have many web oriented projects, including a suite of
online design and marketing content and applications for Sainsbury’s.

They have judged on a number of the most prestigious design awards, and are regular speakers at
business conferences and academic institutions (including Royal college of Art, Central Saint
Martins College of Art and Design, Università della Svizzera Italiana).

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For further information contact:
Kim at Prestel Publishing Limited, 4 Bloomsbury Place, London, WC1A 2QA; tel: +44 (0)20 7323
5004; email: [email protected]

Sharon at Arup, 13 Fitzroy Street, London W1T 4BQ; tel: +44 (0)20 77553685; email:
[email protected]

or Julian at Jannuzzi Smith, 10a Lant Street, London SE1 1QR; tel: +44 (0)20 7234 0557; email
[email protected]

Additional material and downloadable images from the book are available at
www.theinformal.com

© Jannuzzi Smith Ltd 2002

10a Lant Street, London SE1 1QR, Tel: +44 (0)20 7234 0557, Fax: +44 (0)20 7234 0558, [email protected], www.jannuzzismith.com

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