What is it about?
This paper is about an architectural graphic novel narrating key shifts in the canonical (Western) history of architecture through a story of a historical power struggle between cultures of architectural practice in an imaginary metropolis called: Practiceopolis, representing the contemporary architectural profession centred on the fictive island of the confederation of the building industry. The stories revolve around the researcher’s role in a live renovation of a historic building in the UK. The stories reflect upon the value conflicts that occurred during the project’s Progress Meetings and Value Engineering meetings. The stories relocate these meetings within the city of Practiceopolis and dramatise them as value conflicts between the different cultures of practice, whom articulate competing visions for the future of Practiceopolis.
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Why is it important?
The paper shows a process and an outcome of applying research by design methodologies in architecture that deploys methods coming across methods of Design Fiction, storytelling and cartoons as tools for architectural exploration. It communicates its argument through the accessible format of cartoons which may appeal to architectural practitioners as well as academics. The paper shows the use of this format to provoke important questions about everyday and mundane routines of the architectural profession and reflects on the largely tacit assumptions which inform these routines. The paper shows how the medium of graphic novels can act as a focused conversational mode to engage architectural concepts with other kinds of creative practice, moving beyond conventional patterns of thinking and disciplinary boundaries. In this sense, it shows how this type of representation is educational to some extent, but it is also a critical and satirical medium that uses humor and a bit of parody to explore the kinds of contradictions and misunderstandings that necessarily emerge when the different incompatible world views of the players involved in building production collide.
Perspectives
This article lead to many discussion with different architectural scholars and practitioners about storytelling, cartoons and more broadly the genre of graphic novels in architectural discourse. It did not stop at talking about it but actually producing a real novel talking about experiences we experienced together with other members of our research-led architectural practice through our collaboration at Design Office between 2012 to 2017. In five years of practice as Design Office, we’ve discovered that our distinctive expertise as academic practitioners has commercial value. Our clients have benefitted from the application of our knowledge. But we feel that we have benefitted more from the exchanges as participant observer architectural researchers and practitioners.
Dr. Yasser Megahed
Cardiff University
Read the Original
This page is a summary of: PRACTICEOPOLIS: From an Imaginary City to a Graphic Novel, Journal of Architectural Education, January 2018, Taylor & Francis,
DOI: 10.1080/10464883.2018.1410670.
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