By Yasser Megahed
This is a graphic novel about the contemporary architectural profession, in which it acts as the protagonist in the form of an imaginary city called Practiceopolis. The novel narrates quasi-realistic stories that exaggerate the architectural everyday and the tacit, in order to make them prominent and tangible. They depict and dramatise the value conflicts between the different cultures of practising architecture and between the architectural profession and other members of the building industry as political conflicts around the future of Practiceopolis.
The book uses the metaphorical world of Practiceopolis to provoke big questions about everyday routines in the profession that practitioners may take for granted and to examine different ideologies at work among architects and other members of the construction industry. The novel ends in the tradition of dystopian worlds common in a certain strand of graphic novels.
By vividly illustrating and narrating the critical issues he interrogates, the author has created a world which any architect, student or professional, will both instantly recognise and simultaneously reject, provoking the reader to challenge themselves and the profession at large.