The following essay was first published more than 10 years ago as an introduction to our Architecture Graphic Trilogy Beautifully Banal. Since its release both the professions of architecture and comics and the academic components of both disciplines have continued to make rapid developments in technology and representational techniques with the advent of generative AI tools. This essay, updated only for grammatical clarity from its original form is re-released for historic reference. In many ways this writing was the genesis for Dumpy World and the broader project to follow.
…
As the landscape of architectural practice and the values of architecture education continue to change over time, one element has remained consistent from the beginning— architecture as a means of conveying information through drawing. Clients, uses, and societal trends are always in flux but the core values inherent within the architectural discipline remain the same—a particular set of techniques geared toward conveying information graphically. Architectural drawings have the responsibility to communicate not only to the insiders of the profession, but more importantly, to the clients and contractors who are capable of mobilizing a project from the paper space to bring it to the real world by way of financing and construction respectively. It is the task of art to produce visual messages with enigmatic qualities, but it is the responsibility of architecture to uphold that a drawing is meant to convey a specific set of instructions to a targeted audience. In some cases this audience is the client, in other cases it is the contractor, and in most academic contexts it is for other “architect” intellectuals (by consequence of being saddled by insider references and architecture theory).
This is the nature of the craft, and curating to each of these audiences is an important nuance to master. On the academic front, the architectural discipline can come under fire for being too closed down in its accessibility by appealing only to insiders and risks alienating the general public with its idiosyncratic priorities. For built works in this “high design” realm, architects step into the same pitfalls as cryptic artworks, the difference being the public is forced to occupy the cryptic architecture while they could otherwise ignore the cryptic artwork—it is by the nature of working in the public realm that accessibility is necessary. That is to say, one must set foot in the blobby melted library building if they wish to access the services of the public library. But what if it was possible to produce an accessible architectural discourse that brought the public alongside it, one elevated with story-telling aspects that could be enjoyed by the everyman?
It is the task of Beautifully Banal to tap into the long held architectural conventions of our profession and expand upon their usefulness, to push them beyond their boundaries of mere representation and activate them in the realm of narrative. It is through the union of comic books and architectural drawing conventions that we have a proving ground for Beautifully Banal, namely in the exercise of converting architecture-speak drawings to the requirements of sequential art. Through this union new drawing typologies are able to emerge that contribute to a larger vocabulary, one that is now legible to both architect and non-architect alike.
As the young designers of this publication whom are just nearing the completion of our Master's degrees of Architecture, we have each encountered an interesting shift in the methods of architecture education. Both of us were among the last groups of students to receive any sort of hand drafting instruction in our introductory years. We would both reflect upon this time fondly in recognizing that the analogue techniques of drafting instill a labor of love for understanding representative techniques. Skills such as line weighting and clarity of composition can not be ignored in the meticulous process of dragging a rapidiograph ink pen across a silky sheet of mylar paper.
Nowadays it is the case that students new to design school are quickly equipped with a set of digital software techniques to create intelligent 3D CAD models. Our generation of designers often experience flak for a “3D modeled first” approach, rather than understanding, developing, and expanding upon a proper set of drafted plans and sections. The modeled approach certainly has its formal advantages, but by foregoing the old fashioned way it is sometimes jarring to see the connections missed by thinking of the outside first and the inside second, treating design like an object and not as a space. The principles of hand-drafting demand a rigor in the relationship of the plan to the section, as Corbusian logic dictates that from the plan generates all things.
Running parallel to this argument, the traditions of the comic book continue to evolve as the age of web comics, e-books, and film adaptations now serve as the primary delivery method for most of the “casual” observers of the comics medium. The monthly installments of trade paperback comics are becoming a relic of the past, as the labor that was once required to read up on thousands of pages depicting a super hero’s life truly made comic reading a scholarly pursuit in every sense of the word. As a result, the convenience of the silver screen in the modern era has fast-tracked these stories from decade-long toils to the hollywood essentials, and what the comics genre has going for it is its intelligent move towards public accessibility, making these core stories much easier for the casual observer to take part in.
Like architecture, the technical conventions of comics spur from a long history, from pencil sketching to inking, to colorizing and lettering, traditional comics too were a labor of love. Beyond mere process, the discipline of comics has a set of grammar and technique intertwined within it, from the page count of a story, to the number and composition of frames on a page, to the nuanced shape of speech balloons, every stroke of the pen goes towards an overall aesthetic that contributes to a story.
Comics too are foregoing a shift in the discipline brought forth by new technologies, not just in their delivery method, but by the way they are created. Drawing by hand can now be facilitated by easy to use digital drawing tablets, and more and more digital art in the comics industry is becoming common place. Drawing with software allows for a margin of error much larger than drawing by hand (in addition to expediency), and like the hand drafted plans and sections of architecture, it follows that hand drawing in comics is quickly becoming a thing of the past, though it is debatable if this is for the best or not. In the digital age, there are now more comics available than ever before.
With the external pressures of CAD technology forcing evolution for both architecture and comics, we are at a unique intersection that allows for both to be developed with a shared set of techniques. Being of that same young generation of designers that think first through the 3D model, we find the task of the comic book to be no different. We live and die by the model—it allows for continuity and it demands intricacy. By understanding the three-dimensional qualities of a story's environment, rather than a two-dimensional drawing of it, an experience is delivered that goes beyond mere character development and is just as much about a space as it is about the characters that inhabit that space. We are in a situation that allows us to capitalize on the best aspects of technical rigor coupled with the accessible trends of comic book story telling.
Beautifully Banal seeks to build its own genre, it is somewhere between raw communication and refined story-telling. From a technical standpoint, we have mobilized our furthest reaching understandings of the drawing conventions of architecture, always careful to maintain logistical feasibility as well as representational conventions. We have catalogued the most basic tools of our craft, like plans, sections, and elevations, but have also tried to produce something more abstract, a sequential art that doesn't always have a clear sequence.
Beautifully Banal is an excuse for us to take on the sort of mind numbing drawings that educational teaching skips over (at least in the schools we have been exposed to) in lieu of more fantastical design problems. At its surface, it tells the story of Phineas the Fly, a brave insect on a journey to find his way back home. At its core, it is a witty set of drawings which poke fun at the mundane acceptance many of us subscribe to in our lives and in our professions.