COMIC/BANDE-DESSINÉE

COMIC BOOK
THE PALACES ARE OURS! COLLECTIVE ARCHITECTURE SKETCHBOOKS

/// Click here to see the travel sketch expo at Sans-Taverne

What started as architecture field research in the summer of 2024 is transforming into a 130-page comic book project which is still ongoing. Over three months, I traveled between Berlin, Leipzig, Amsterdam, Barcelona, Zaragoza and Cal Rosal to document and learn from self-managed initiatives transforming heritage buildings. The project aims to highlight the overlooked contribution of spatial experimentation and constructive creativity emerging from the radical appropriation of convents, factories, villas, churches, prisons, housing blocs, etc.

As I produced an extensive quantity of drawings (6 sketchbooks), the project naturally lent itself to the visual/narrative form of the comic book, which felt definitely more fitting than an academic paper. The comic thus follows a character’s journey through 8 chosen projects, highlighting the architectural creativity unique to these spaces and how they cultivate collective empowerment. The narrative arc progresses along my experience as a novice researcher who is figuring out what is field research in architecture, exposing my successes and failures, but also my changing perspective on the act of drawing as a way of seeing and learning, and not only representing.