Review: John Hill - Building Stories

Notable Books of 2012

Designer:

John Hill

Book:

Building Stories

Review:

Chris Ware has had a thing for buildings for a while now, witnessed by Jimmy Corrigan, set against the backdrop of the 1893 World’s Columbian Exposition in Chicago, and his collaboration with Ira Glass and Tim Samuelson on Lost Buildings, about Louis Sullivan and preservation in the same city. His latest, like George Perec’s Life: A User’s Manual, reveals the fictitious lives of a single building’s inhabitants by hybridizing a graphic novel with architectural drawings, a board game, pamphlets, and other formats. It is less a book than a world within a box, 14 “easily misplaced elements” without a beginning, an end, or a predetermined order. It is a melancholy treasure whose handmade panels beg to be handled.

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