The Lost Tablets are a series of works by Jan van Schaik that explore the geometric language of architecture through the medium of children’s building blocks. Constructed by van Schaik from found blocks (many bearing the teeth marks of their former owners), each tablet flickers with strange resonances that point to a shared but deeply subjective symbolism of building.

From the buttresses of Gothic cathedrals and the blue ceilings of the Shah Mosque of Isfahan, to the inhabited machines and weightless engineering of the Space Age, the genetic lineage of the Lost Tablets is impossible to unpick, even while the potential connections to architectural history are hard to ignore.

The Lost Tablets book continues this exploration of the tension between the ideal of a shared architectural language, and the intrinsically personal nature of architectural interpretation. 

Within the book, 50 authors respond to the first 50 works in the Lost Tablets series, with each author articulating their perception of one work, in their own language, and in a form corresponding to their own interests. The authors come from diverse fields. They are economists, songwriters, comedians, artists, curators, architects, linguists, sex workers, journalists, historians, lawyers, writers, philosophers, designers, poets, jewellers, educators, cyberneticians, students, and therapists. Their readings are equally diverse.