Since its inception, T.O.P. office has boosted architecture as an uncompromising social tool to persistently question the terrestrial scale and the delicate balance with mankind. Whichever way you turn it, Earth - the orb - is the undeniable alpha and omega for any future stance, action or intervention. An insight Luc Deleu & T.O.P. office have never failed to underscore - or challenge. Armed with an unsparing but humorous logic, a firm belief in the freedom of the individual, and a persistent commitment to ecology, T.O.P. office continues to hold up a mirror to society. Always unsolicited. Simply because they have to. For this publication, editors Peter Swinnen and Anne Judong were given unlimited access to the archives of T.O.P. office. The title is also the filter through which to examine the living archive. Which projects - whether conceived in the 1970s or 2000s - retain the intelligent promise of a future plan? And how can they enlighten designers, architects, urban planners, ecologists, cultural workers, administrations and policymakers of today and tomorrow? A future plan in itself.

Concerned primarily with the medium of painting, the work of Tina Gillen examines how we relate to the world around us, namely through the themes of landscape and dwelling. Her paintings often originate in photographic images that she modifies, simplifies, pictorially "translates," and pairs with other elements to arrive at compositions that purposefully nurture a certain ambiguity, somewhere between abstraction and figuration, construction and improvisation, the surface of the canvas and the translation of a space. This book is being published in conjunction with her exhibition Faraway So Close, presented at the Luxembourg Pavilion as part of the 59th International Art Exhibition – La Biennale di Venezia. Richly illustrated, the catalogue also includes three essays addressing various aspects of Tina Gillen’s work—the relationship between painting and space, the ties between painting and photography, and the meaning of landscape today—as well as an extensive interview with the artist.