Architectural Spaces of Comics: Social and Visual Representations

Comics is used to communicate messages in a fun story-telling manner, while architectural visuals are commonly appreciated through drawings. This paper discusses the potentials of comics as an important communication medium. It explores how comics aid in showcasing architectural ideas with unique visual representations. Besides this, comics is a tool to communicate nuances of social phenomena. Our study employed content analysis on selected comics; supported by interviews with comic artists and architects. Findings suggest that comics project architectural spaces in easy comprehension as it breaks the formality of architecture presentations and translate them into laymen's terms. The uniqueness in the visual representations allow artists to express art and convey intended messages in lively manners. Referring to selected comics from Malaysia, our study demonstrates how the local comic contents are very much ingrained in the local context, and how they have manifested contemporary social, cultural, and political scenarios with symbolic visual representations. The study suggests that comics should be further explored to be used as a useful alternative medium in architecture communications.