20 / Narrative
Winter 13

Architecture and narrative, as Victor Hugo nostalgically pointed out in The Hunchback of Notre Dame in 1831, have walked hand in hand through history, crossing paths without really risking the extinction that the archdeacon of Notre-Dame gloomily predicted. Today, in a moment where the conjunction of the crisis and the entrance into a new stage in the communication era impulse the discipline into new, multiple directions, the narrative aspects of architecture come to the front. This issue tackles the intersections between architectural practices and different forms of visual narrative. Within this overall theme, our NARRATIVE issue moves on both sides of the line that separates these two disciplines, presenting three different perspectives, organized in three consecutive parts. The first section of the issue deals with the presence of graphic narrative in disciplinary architecture, both past and present while the second one discusses the crossing of borders portrayed by comics artists who also make forays into the built world. Finally, the third one moves towards both sides of the spectrum, briefly covering the tangents with (implied) written narratives and emerging animation practices in architecture.
Contributions by Andrea Alberghini, Ethel Baraona Pohl, Sir Peter Cook, Manuele Fior, Factory Fifteen, Iker Gil, Jones, Partners: Architecture, Tom Kaczynski, Jimenez Lai, Klaus, Léopold Lambert, Luis Miguel (Koldo) Lus Arana, Marc-Antoine Mathieu, Clara Olóriz Sanjuán, Cesar Reyes Nájera, François Schuiten, Joost Swarte, Mélanie van der Hoorn, and Chris Ware whose work is featured in our cover.
This issue is guest edited by architectural scholar Koldo Lus Arana and architect-cartoonist Klaus.
Introduction
Issue statement by Iker Gil,editor in chief of MAS Context
Building Stories
Drawings by Chris Ware. Text by Klaus.
Comics and Architecture, Comics in Architecture A (not so) short recount of the interactions between architecture and graphic narrative [1]
Essay by Koldo Lus Arana
Buildings and their representations collapsing upon one another Architecture in Comic Strip Form
Essay by Mélanie van der Hoorn
Amazing Archigram!
Clara Olóriz and Koldo Lus Arana interview architect Sir Peter Cook
Lost in the Line
Graphic Novel by Léopold Lambert
Out of Water
Graphic Novel by Jimenez Lai
Kartun: The View!
Graphic Novel by Jones, Partners: Architecture, Mark Simmons, and The Southern California Institute of Architecture
Cartooning Architecture and Other Issues
Iker Gil interviews graphic artist Klaus
Starchitecture Redux
Cartoons by Klaus
Sensing the Comic’s DNA Excerpts of a conversation with François Schuiten
Mélanie van der Hoorn in conversation with François Schuiten
Swarte’s Mystery Theater
Koldo Lus Arana in conversation with Joost Swarte
Labyrinths and Metaphysical Constructions An Interview with Marc-Antonie Mathieu
Léopold Lambert interviews graphic novelist Marc-Antoine Mathieu
Images Come First
Andrea Alberghini interviews Manuele Fior
Beta Testing Architecture Yearning for Space with Tom Kaczynski
Koldo Lus Arana interviews Tom Kaczynski
Archiporn or Storylines? Creative Architectural commercials as challenges to the communication and marketing of architecture
Essay by Mélanie van der Hoorn
Beyond Built Architecture
Ethel Baraona Pohl and César Reyes from dpr-barcelona interview Jonathan Gales, founding member of Factory Fifteen