Maxime DelvauxChâteau de Chambord Dilmun Burial Mounds, Joze Plecnik, RIo Tinto, Victor Horta

Maxime Delvaux is best known for his commissioned photographs of contemporary buildings by architects such as Christian Kerez, Herzog & de Meuron, Bruther, Muoto, Baukunst and 51N4E. As a photographer, he also accompanies architects in the research process for the design of buildings and urban spaces, exhibitions and educational experiences, as demonstrated by his long-standing collaborations with Central ofaau and MBL architects. In this book, Maxime Delvaux pursues a more solitary trajectory, visiting buildings and sites that span a much wider historical period and resonate with his personal fascinations.

The publication is structured around five photographic series, each devoted to a particular building, site or architect: Château de Chambord in France, the Dilmun tumulus in Bahrain, Jože Plečnik’s buildings in and around Ljubljana, Río Tinto in Spain and Victor Horta’s Palais des Beaux-Arts in Brussels. Above all, it is a book of stories in which Maxime Delvaux’s series are accompanied by texts. Various authors have been invited to react to the images with the idea of experimenting with the text: fiction, historical essays, round table discussions, scientific texts and photo novels. Graphic designers played with the text and images to give them shape. Readers, in turn, are invited to create possible alliances between images and text. Following the example of Maxime Delvaux’s photographic approach, these texts and their relationship with the photographs are specific to each subject, illustrated by photographs.

Co-published with Architecture Curating Practice and Verlag der Buchhandlung Walther und Franz König (commercial publisher) with the support of the Flemish Government – Flanders State of the Art, and the Fédération Wallonie-Bruxelles – Cellule Architecture.