Sequence as Structure: Organizing Character, Time, and Space

This paper is the result of a four-year experience in teaching Architectural Presentation II at the Islamic Azad University in Mashhad, Iran. Students analyzed the function of abstraction, closure, transition, and sequence in both fields as a means of challenging notions of linearity and completeness. A thorough diagrammatic analysis of comics gave rise to a series of alternative spatial strategies and storyboards. The adaptation of these fictional constructs into real space happened. The projects transformed the familiar conditions of the brutalist estate into augmented experiences, employing methods of reconfiguration, multiplication displacement. To emulate the complex relationships in comics between character, place, and sequence, the proposals largely focused on effect and performance. Above all the programme emphasized the importance of representation in architectural production. Within the confines of the graphic vernacular of the comic, students discovered new forms of narrative architectural drawings.