Jan Robin

On Comics and Architecture II

The other day I was thinking about the connection between the use of space in comics and architecture.

It occured to me that spaces in cities and comics have various similiarities. A street functions very much like the space between two panels: imagine a street with two houses opposite each other. Both buildings have life within them and the people crossing the street, from one buildung to another are connecting them, much like the reader’s eye connects two panels.

Beyond this, the qualities of panel-borders are similiar to the ones of walls: opening the Farnsworth House’s interior to nature with a floor-to-ceiling glass and thus basing it within its surroundings, is almost the same as omitting a panel’s borders to give the story a setting and certain atmopshere.

Would it be easier or helpful, as an architect, to think of space not in a purely architectural, but comic-like storytelling way? And couldn’t we, especially as students of architecture, learn about space from reading comic books as much as from reading an academic text?

On Comics and Architecture I

Bjarke Ingels is without a doubt a dazzling architect and I would never dare to criticize him, but I do have some thoughts on one issue: his “Archicomic” YES IS MORE.

YES IS MORE is innovative when it comes to architectural publishing, but it falls short of its potential as a comic book. Mr Ingels is trying “to tell a complex story in a simple way”. But comics are not simple. It is easy for Mr Ingels to present himself and his work, but some of its pages are lacking basic storytelling craftsmanship in such a way that it becomes almost incomprehensible to an unacceptable level.

A comic is not just pictures, soundwords and whatever, but all those components put together and in context with each other. I dare to say, that comics are the best way to tell a complex story, as Guy Delisle put it: “Comics are very efficient, if you want to explain something.”