Concerned with how readers often fail to acknowledge and ultimately disregard the relevance of student ideas, reducing them to image-making, an Architecture School’s Dean struggled to find the best way to showcase such work.

The School of Architecture of the Polytechnic University of Puerto Rico decided to celebrate its 10th anniversary by publishing and exhibiting the most important student work made so far. As structure for the publication, it was decided to present the projects in question format, underlining the importance of inquiry over image. One hundred entries (grouped and coded by theme) predetermined the book’s format and that of the exhibit. Elegance (it is about architecture) and informality (but also about students) had to be conveyed.

From the start, the book was conceived as a tool for students to refer to, more than just the historical documentation of past achievements. As such, it had to perform as a effective reference, facilitating the identification of themes, problems, grade level, authors and instructors.

The structure of the book's design became the anniversary's icon, as well as the navigational strategy for the spatialization of the exhibit. Book photos by Eric M. Jukelevics. Exhibit photo by Alberto Rigau.

The books strategy was to present student work in forms of questions, instead of presentations. A numerical sequence served as index and provided referential cues for later browsing. Photos by Eric M. Jukelevics.

In addition, a color coding system reinforce the indexical nature of the publication to help those who will come back to it again and again. Photo by Eric M. Jukelevics.