“On a bridge in Berlin”: A self-reflective case study on a work in progress

This is a self-reflective case study based on the development of the graphic novel (GN) “On a bridge in Berlin”. The GN will be used as an introduction to the history of architecture as a part of the curriculum in Architecture and Design at Aalborg University, and as a more general introduction to an understanding of European architectural history. It will also expand my artistic research on how this GN can reach its specific target group of architectural design students.

The GN is structured as a narrative that skips back and forth between different styles and periods of architectural history. It is a science fiction that jumps in time and place. It begins with Martin Heidegger´s quotation “The Bridge gathers to itself in its own way earth and sky, divinities and mortals”, where the bridge is a state of mind, a chronotope, a portal in time between past, present, and future.
The methodological approach is based on the French philosopher Gaston Bachelard, who states that poetry appears as a phenomenon of freedom, and that “poets and painters are born as phenomenologists” (Bachelard 1958).
It is the story of the researcher’s and artist’s own reflective and interpretive strategies for authentic, first-person research based on Bachelard and Heidegger. This GN investigates how architecture changes our cities and cultural identity. It merges different narrative time layers such as childhood memories, dreams, hallucinations, fiction, past, present and future.
The findings of this paper explain why a cross-disciplinary approach is necessary to show that architecture, art, poetry, culture, technology and personal experience create an understanding of the zeitgeist of a specific time period and architectural style, and why the GN is a perfect medium for this investigation.
Keywords: Chronotope, time, space, memory, city, architecture, and phenomenology.