Le comic est done (subtitle: “Paint it Grey”). Sometimes a banana is not a banana, and sometimes a comic is not, uh, non-esoteric, but there you go. Sometimes you go to a war museum in Manchester and you think to yourself, “the guy who designed this place should be whipped naked through the streets of Aberdeen.” Sometimes you spend all weekend watching Blackadder DVDs instead of leaving the house. Uh, look, I’ll see you next week alright?
–Rowntree
July 21, 2008 at 2:30 am
I don’t even want to know what Frank Lloyd Wright and Buckminster Fuller had to do to get THEIR designs approved. Gives new meaning to the term “Bucky balls.” :-p
July 21, 2008 at 5:11 am
[...] unknown . Excerpt: Le comic est done (subtitle: “Paint it Grey”). Sometimes a banana is not a banana, and sometimes a comic is not, uh, non-esoteric, but there you go. Sometimes you go to a war museum in Manchester and you think to yourself, … [...]
July 21, 2008 at 5:23 am
[has been scarred forever by Frank Gehry, thank you]
I think Gehry DID say he came up with his designs based around what he thought other people would hate…
fabulous comic, as always ^___^
July 21, 2008 at 6:53 am
an evil architect whose malevolant goal in life is to make the world a more ugly, assymmetric place?
Bulls’eye!
fantaschtick (I love her expression in the first and last panels).
Well done, my good man.
July 21, 2008 at 9:29 am
Finally, someone who hates humans as much as I do! She is a design Goddess!
July 21, 2008 at 10:31 am
Are you sure this isn’t a documentary?
July 21, 2008 at 11:04 am
i think henrietta’s art is called “entartere kunst”.
July 21, 2008 at 11:34 am
I think she designed my local shopping centre…
July 21, 2008 at 1:25 pm
I would rather go to that mall than the one I do.
July 21, 2008 at 5:36 pm
Refreshing! I seriously thought I was the only one who hated ‘sore thumb’ architecture. I call it ‘sore thumb’ because I also lump in buildings that just don’t work at all with any of the surrounding structures (the pyramid at the Lourvre and the terrible Experience Music Project building in Seattle and the average McMansion come to mind).
I’m not one of those nothing-new-is-good-preserve-the-old-at-all-costs guy, but a building should fit into its environment; whether that environment is a forest or an existing cityscape. T
July 21, 2008 at 7:41 pm
Oh, how you hit the nail right on the head with this one! That asshole Gehry stuck my college with an intensely ugly, literally non-functional computer science building (air conditioning rumbled so loudly through all the exposed aluminum ducting that the building couldn’t be qualified as occupiable-by-public, there wasn’t anything like enough electrical capacity (computer science….lots of computers….think, now — would they need, um….ELECTRICITY?) and so on). And, of course, he got some damned award for it. That’s all modern architects do, is seek awards. No of ‘em give a shit about the victims they inflict their “creativity” upon.
Unless, of course, it’s all actually nothing but raw evil, as you’ve drawn. Man, how do you *think* of this stuff?
July 21, 2008 at 7:42 pm
By the way, did your architect character do the new fonts on the site, too?
July 21, 2008 at 10:10 pm
Good comic this week, I like this evil and manipulative architect, but I disagree with your point of view, in my opinion the attacks to modern architects are a bit gratuitous (except in the case of Frank Gehry) and the same thing for some comments (except the one that have to work in a Frank Gehry´s building).
I expect to see those spanish translated comics soon!
July 21, 2008 at 11:55 pm
Fear not, I continue to work on the translated comics!
Rob Retter: Loved your Gehry anecdote. Raw evil, I say!
July 22, 2008 at 3:39 pm
speaking as an architect myself I must say that after reading this weeks “subnormality” i was shocked! ..shocked by how accurate it is! you are my new god! we have already started work on a new social centre to be built in your graven image. all hail the great rowntree!!
July 22, 2008 at 5:27 pm
What are the odds? I did a Frank Gehry cartoon just last week.
I whole-heartedly agree with this week’s cartoon, as well.
July 24, 2008 at 6:06 pm
Always amazing.
July 25, 2008 at 4:31 pm
Brilliant. Absolutely brilliant!
July 27, 2008 at 8:31 am
Excellent premise; great execution. A very solid comic. The architect-tease images make me laugh audibly each time I look at them.
July 29, 2008 at 11:32 am
It’s 5:30 in the morning, and I’ve just finished reading Subnormality from the beginning, and I think I’ve found my new favourite comic series. Thanks- I’m gonna go to bed now.
August 15, 2008 at 5:20 am
if you are implying that Le Corbusier’s (AKA God) architecture is somehow related to the hack called Gehry you are sadly mistaken.
I could have a lengthy discussion on how modernism of the 20′s-60′s and “modernism” of the contemporary era are vastly different. (Different for the sake of efficiency-Corbusier’s idea of the building as a machine versus different for the sake of being different- Gehry’s disney concert hall monstrousity).
but they are somewhat the same in that they both thought there needed to be difference, and that thought will never really go away.
and to arkonbey– we could have a discussion on how the juxtaposition of two vastly different things can be successful and not “fit” into the environment. (example comes to mind — the Bauhaus masters’ houses)
August 15, 2008 at 5:28 am
okay…I thought about it for a couple more minutes, and what you are calling modern architecture isn’t really modern architecture at all. Gehry and Lieb. are contemporary architects yet to be really called anything.
Modern Architecture is a movement in the early 20th centuy (started at the Bauhaus–Corbusier, Gropius, Mies) that started in the 20′s and last just past WWII. After this point modernism becomes muddled and breaks into different categories (brtualism, deconstructivism, CONstructivism, etc.) and today’s architecture is derived from those forms of “modernism” but aren’t true modernism…
ok, I’m done geeking out now (4 years of architecture school tends to geek one out on architecture)
October 13, 2008 at 6:44 am
some very disturbing images of scantily clad old men you’ve given me…
October 16, 2008 at 10:46 pm
“To the architects and builders of greater Miami,
Thank you for building another mind-numbing, stupid looking EYESORE. If you keep up at your present rate, you will be able to fill up the beach with them. Well done ! ” — Peter Lavetti, artist and photographer
December 6, 2008 at 3:59 am
Being an architecture student I found more than the middle panel funny, It’s so ridiculous while still having that hint of possibility I see in many of these, surreal comics But lets say I’ve yet to encounter a anyone using sex appeal during a review. I can almost imagine alot of these comics animated into shorts, like robot Chicken
February 3, 2009 at 12:44 am
I am reminded of The Fountainhead….
….
..
February 5, 2009 at 3:34 am
I like the avatars.