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Graphic Novels for Architects and Designers

Graphic Novels

 

Graphic Novels for Architects and Designers

 


As a design school located just five blocks from the world famous Comic-Con, NewSchool is uniquely positioned to consider the relationship between graphic art and the design professions. Our unique collection of graphic novels explore themes around the architecture and design disciplines. 

The graphic novel is a visual means to convey personal stories about design. The combination of words and pictures gives emotional impact and resonates with visual learners and creatives.

Many architects and designers have used comic book aesthetics to communicate their ideas and designs. Graphic novels combine the explicit meaning of words and symbols with the abstract expressiveness of art

View all graphic novels in our Catalog



Exhibition Collection

The City a vision in woodcuts

The City: a vision in woodcuts

Offers a stunning depiction of urban Europe between the world wars. Unforgettable images, rendered in 100 woodcuts of remarkable force and beauty.

Victory Point

Victory Point

On a summer’s day, Ellen returns to the coastal town she grew up in, the picturesque, yet architecturally strange, Victory Point.

No small plans

No Small Plans

Follows the adventures of teens in Chicago's past, present, and future as they wrestle with designing the city they want, need, and deserve. 

Bauhaus a graphic novel

Bauhaus Graphic Novel

The main character of this graphic novel is not a person but an idea—the school of Bauhaus, which emerged as the fundamental reference point for virtually every avant-garde artistic movement that followed. 

BIG: Yes is More

BIG. Yes is More. 

The easily accessible but radical manifesto of Copenhagen-based architectural practice Bjarke Ingels Group, or BIG. Uses the comic book format to express BIGs groundbreaking agenda for contemporary architecture. 

Meet the Nelsons!

Meet the Nelsons!

A critical send-up of 1990s architectural discourse and a masterfully executed homage to the traditions and techniques of comic book art. Addresses themes ranging from the legacy of the machine aesthetic to the challenges of virtuality to key disciplinary personalities such as Buckminster Fuller and Manfredo Tafuri. 

Unflattening

Unflattening

An experiment in visual thinking that defies conventional forms of scholarly discourse to offer readers both a stunning work of graphic art and a serious inquiry into the ways humans construct knowledge.

Robert Moses: The Master Builder of New York City

Robert Moses: The Master Builder of New York City

From the subway to the skyscraper, from Manhattan's Financial District to the Long Island suburbs, every inch of New York tells the story of this controversial urban planner's mind. This book takes on the infamous "Power Broker" and unlocks the historical battles that created the modern metropolis.

 

The Life of an Architect

 
The Life of an Architect 

Archibald runs an architecture office with his partner and engineer, Gerald. Follow his daily struggle with his office colleagues, employees, clients, contractors, civil servants, consultants, architecture critics, and other people involved in the building industry. 

Mister X: Eviction

Mister X: Eviction

The psychetecture upon which Radiant City was built is driving its residents insane, and only Mister X can help!

Hand-Drying in America

Hand-Drying in America

Frequently and brilliantly bizarre, and always mesmerizing, Hand-Drying in America ensures that you will never look at a building, a bar of soap, or an ATM the same way.

Citizens of no place

Citizens of No Place

A collection of short stories on architecture and urbanism, graphically represented using manga-style storyboards. Fiction is used as a strategy to unpack thoughts about architecture.

Building Stories

Building Stories

A variety of reading material addressing virtually any imaginable artistic or poetic taste, while discovering a protagonist wondering if she’ll ever move from the rented close quarters of lonely young adulthood to the mortgaged expanse of love and marriage.

 

Eileen Gray: A house under the sun

 
Eileen Gray: A House Under the Sun

Meet Eileen Gray, the female architect behind the world-renowned E-1027 house and a pioneer of the Modern Movement. Exquisite visuals illuminate the previously overlooked struggles and triumphs of a young queer Irish designer.

Batman: Death by Design

Batman: Death by Design

Gotham City is undergoing one of the most expansive construction booms in its history. The most prestigious architects from across the globe have buildings in various phases of completion all over town. As chairman of the Gotham Landmarks Commission, Bruce Wayne is a key part of this boom.

Asterios Polyp

Asterios Polyp

Meet Asterios Polyp: middle-aged, meagerly successful architect, whose life is upended when his New York City apartment goes up in flames. In a daze, he leaves the city and relocates to a small town in the American heartland. But what is this “escape” really about?

Swimming in Darkness

Swimming in Darkness

Pierre drops out of architecture school and travels to Vals in the Swiss Alps, home to  architect Peter Zumthor's Therme Vals. Sketchbook in hand, he attempts to uncover the truth behind the secret rooms he discovers deep within the complex

Mister X: The Modern Age

Mister X: The Modern Age

In the retro-futuristic metropolis of Radiant City, its mysterious creator, Mister X, must protect the city and its residents from the architecture of the city that poses a danger to all those within it.

 

RICHARD WELSH LIBRARY at NewSchool of Architecture + Design

1249 F Street San Diego CA 92101

619 684 8783

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