MASTER OF ARCHITECTURE
Ruotao Rita Wang—Alpha Rho Chi Bronze Medal
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Ruotao Rita Wang—Alpha Rho Chi Bronze Medal
About the Award
A graduate who displays excellence throughout their academic career.
Comics Everything: Speculating Architecture Through Comics
The ever-changing built environment forces architecture to be speculatively re-imagined at every critical juncture to explore what-if scenarios. Speculative architecture seeks solutions beyond conventional tools to discover alternative, unique dimensions for future praxis - which is imperative to propel architecture in new directions.
The desire to explore alternative fictional scenarios in comics* aligns with the pursuit of speculative thinking in architecture. This thesis argues that future architectural praxis can employ comics as a design mechanism for architectural speculation, focusing on the medium’s formal specificities, narrative structure, and fictional world-building.
As a design mechanism, the comic medium facilitates the generation of speculative architecture and elevates the design process. Oscillating between the possible and impossible, comics afford designers new ways to conceive and create a liberated speculative architecture.
*The term ‘comics’ is used as a superordinate term that comprises many graphic styles such as American comics, Japanese manga, the Franco-Belgian style Bandes dessinées, and graphic novels.
The comics everything model can serve as a strategic tool for designers in the field of speculative design. The research initiated with the comic parameters which were used as points of inspiration to facilitate the generation of design. This led to the development of the comic architecture process, consisting of comic ingredients, comic machine with a recursive mechanism, and finally, comic readers which refers to a broader concept - discipline of architecture.
The design project is the development of comic story called “Legacy”. “Legacy” aims to demonstrate the architectural proposition through a coherent story that ties different worlds together. In this case, the story centers around a mysterious death of an architect in the near future, witnessed by people closest to him. The narrative is instrumental in the Comics Everything model, and the development of the story is closely linked to the design of a future living environment. Each witness in the story is a narrator who experiences one aspect of the future environment and also a designer who constructs part of the environment based on their own perspective. This approach allows for a variety of perspectives to be explored while still maintaining coherence and providing a demonstration of the proposed architectural model.
A graduate who displays excellence throughout their academic career.
Comics Everything: Speculating Architecture Through Comics
The ever-changing built environment forces architecture to be speculatively re-imagined at every critical juncture to explore what-if scenarios. Speculative architecture seeks solutions beyond conventional tools to discover alternative, unique dimensions for future praxis - which is imperative to propel architecture in new directions.
The desire to explore alternative fictional scenarios in comics* aligns with the pursuit of speculative thinking in architecture. This thesis argues that future architectural praxis can employ comics as a design mechanism for architectural speculation, focusing on the medium’s formal specificities, narrative structure, and fictional world-building.
As a design mechanism, the comic medium facilitates the generation of speculative architecture and elevates the design process. Oscillating between the possible and impossible, comics afford designers new ways to conceive and create a liberated speculative architecture.
*The term ‘comics’ is used as a superordinate term that comprises many graphic styles such as American comics, Japanese manga, the Franco-Belgian style Bandes dessinées, and graphic novels.
The comics everything model can serve as a strategic tool for designers in the field of speculative design. The research initiated with the comic parameters which were used as points of inspiration to facilitate the generation of design. This led to the development of the comic architecture process, consisting of comic ingredients, comic machine with a recursive mechanism, and finally, comic readers which refers to a broader concept - discipline of architecture.
The design project is the development of comic story called “Legacy”. “Legacy” aims to demonstrate the architectural proposition through a coherent story that ties different worlds together. In this case, the story centers around a mysterious death of an architect in the near future, witnessed by people closest to him. The narrative is instrumental in the Comics Everything model, and the development of the story is closely linked to the design of a future living environment. Each witness in the story is a narrator who experiences one aspect of the future environment and also a designer who constructs part of the environment based on their own perspective. This approach allows for a variety of perspectives to be explored while still maintaining coherence and providing a demonstration of the proposed architectural model.
