The modern skyscraper emerged at the same time as modern narrative cartooning, in the middle of the 19th century, although both forms had prehistories that extend further into the past. This marriage of comics and architecture might sound surprising, but it has a long history, which Ware, deeply knowledgeable about the past, knows well. One way of defining the genius of Chris Ware is to say that he fuses the disparate forms of comics and architecture, using his nonpareil skills in visual storytelling to show how the buildings we construct are not just empty containers but influence us as much as we shape them.

They are constructed at a particular moment, they weather a sometimes hostile environment, they age and need repair, and unless they are looked after, they become ramshackle and ultimately fall apart or are demolished. But buildings exist in time as well as space. Western architecture has never strayed far from its roots in Euclidian geometry, so the drama of our existence is played out on boxy stages defined by straight lines, right angles, squares, cubes, rectangles and other sharp-edged forms.Īrchitecture is not usually thought of as a narrative art form. We are born in boxes, live in boxes and die in boxes: hospitals, incubators, apartment buildings, houses, schools, offices, elevators, cubicles, prisons, shopping malls, big-box stores, nursing homes, caskets, urns. This sentence can be taken as a figurative description of the way life traps us in social roles that are difficult to escape, but it also happens to be literally true.

Building Stories by Chris Ware