Asterios Polyp by David Mazzucchelli
A "paper" architect (one who wins recognition for proposals/competitions but not built work) suffers from being overly academic, fatalistically literal in his search for recognizing (what he sees) as design purity and insufferable in having the last word (typically critical) has his past life destroyed by fate, realizes what happiness he sacrificed to further his own self-satisfied identity and finally admits his ability to be incorrect in an attempt to regain his humanity.
What more could I say? It is sort of a fable for today's over critical designer. What is lost when snarky commentary replaces helpful critique? How much is sacrificed when one exists in a world where only your own view is valid? How can beauty be judged?
Like most graphic novels there is so much more than the story telling, there is the graphical work consisting of elegantly simple drawings depicting stylistic changes to accentuate how our memories of events are a retelling of stories colored by our own emotion. The layers of stories, current lines interjected with memories as the main character, Asterios, struggles to comes to terms with how his life has resulted in its current state, allows one to trace the slow development of his emerging humanity as he crawls forth from a defensive shell of hyper-evaluation used to ascertain his own superiority (and of course how he got there in the first place).
Of course it isn't just Asterios whom makes the story fascinating, there is a whole realm of characters, at times caricatures of society, exploring the confounding interactions between these disparate groups and deftly illustrating that life, like architecture, is most interesting where dissimilarities occur.
It was a quick read and actually quite good that would make a fantastic gift for anyone slowing slipping into the world of becoming a self-contained and annoying self referential bastard. I admit, I recognized bits of myself in there.
A "paper" architect (one who wins recognition for proposals/competitions but not built work) suffers from being overly academic, fatalistically literal in his search for recognizing (what he sees) as design purity and insufferable in having the last word (typically critical) has his past life destroyed by fate, realizes what happiness he sacrificed to further his own self-satisfied identity and finally admits his ability to be incorrect in an attempt to regain his humanity.
What more could I say? It is sort of a fable for today's over critical designer. What is lost when snarky commentary replaces helpful critique? How much is sacrificed when one exists in a world where only your own view is valid? How can beauty be judged?
Like most graphic novels there is so much more than the story telling, there is the graphical work consisting of elegantly simple drawings depicting stylistic changes to accentuate how our memories of events are a retelling of stories colored by our own emotion. The layers of stories, current lines interjected with memories as the main character, Asterios, struggles to comes to terms with how his life has resulted in its current state, allows one to trace the slow development of his emerging humanity as he crawls forth from a defensive shell of hyper-evaluation used to ascertain his own superiority (and of course how he got there in the first place).
Of course it isn't just Asterios whom makes the story fascinating, there is a whole realm of characters, at times caricatures of society, exploring the confounding interactions between these disparate groups and deftly illustrating that life, like architecture, is most interesting where dissimilarities occur.
It was a quick read and actually quite good that would make a fantastic gift for anyone slowing slipping into the world of becoming a self-contained and annoying self referential bastard. I admit, I recognized bits of myself in there.
