Toda Volume Diagram

                 

A Volume Diagram of the Toda House

The Toda House (by Kimihiko Okada) was created with a very clear concept; a space created by a single coiled slab that served as both ceiling and floor. This divided the house into three separate parts, the slab, the indoor area between the layers of the slab, and the exterior space defined by the volume of the house.

So to diagram the book I naturally divided up the components of the book to match the three basic components of the house. The slab was represented by the cover of the book, serving as floor and ceiling to the pages which expressed the transparent but solid space of the interior. 

The remaining player, the void within the boundaries of the house, was just that, the absence of material.

The only remaining difficulty was how to create an overlapping coil of a single material while keeping the materials together. The solution was to carve out the basic hollow parallelogram plan of the building and make an incision through the non-binding side to the center.

Then I was able to manipulate the book so that the covers created a single continuous plane. All that remained was to cut away the spine cover and liner to reveal the binding and allow the exposed indoor space to continue.