Terroir: Instruments

Instruments is an exploration of how architecture can work to connect people with place, both physically (through choreography) and psycho-spatially (through wonder). The book turns its focus away from architecture’s conventional obsession with the material qualities of the object (and type as the underpinning logic of the architectural object), to the many other, equally vital ways in which relationships are formed and reformed between us and the places we occupy.

It is the first in a series of publications on the architectural practice TERROIR, where each book is dedicated to examining the importance of a single design strategy in the work of TERROIR and others.

The book includes essays by Slavoj Zizek, Slovenian philosopher and sociologist, as well as David A Garcia, founding director of MAP Architects in Copenhagen. Also included is an interview between the philosopher and architectural writer Andrew Benjamin and TERROIR’s founding director Gerard Reinmuth.

TERROIR was founded in 1999 by three colleagues from Hobart, Gerard Reinmuth, Scott Balmforth and Richard Blythe. The practice now has offices in Sydney, Hobart and Copenhagen. To this day, the landscape of Tasmania and the political tensions of a society divided along environmental lines continue to influence TERROIR’s approach to architecture and place.