Series
GSD Lectures (2008-2009)
An assorted collection of cartoons chronicling the life and events at the Harvard Graduate School of Design during the 2008-2009 academic year (and beyond, although not as much as I would have liked), first in the short-lived TRAYS online student journal, then here. Featuring: Michael Hays, Antoine Picon, Preston Scott Cohen, Ben van Berkel, Ciro Najle, Moshen Mostafavi, Jef Kipnis, Neri Oxman, Michael Meredith, Hilary Sample, Catherine Ingraham… and many more! Part satire, part sheer daily reality, I could have spent the next 20 years drawing those. Unfortunately, I came up with those at the end of my three years at the GSD, so that was that (for the time being, at least).
Kunst Haas (2009-who knows?)
Starting with his infamous lecture at the ‘Ecological Urbanism’ conference at the Harvard GSD in April 2009, Koolhaas became for a while a recurring character in my cartoons, especially after ‘On Starchitecture’, with him posing in front of a version of Shepard Fairey’s ‘Hope’ poster garnered some internet attention. After some quick variations on it (Kool, Hush, Evil), I’ve reused it abundantly in later cartoons, and I have added a few more iterations from time to time. Again, fewer that I would have liked (or have in mind). My greatest regret, however, is not producing some merchandising at the time.
The New City Reader (2010-2011)
A series of cartoons produced as the in-house editorial cartoonist for Kazys Varnelis’ and Joseph Grima’s The New City Reader: A Newspaper of Public Space (and my first stint as a regular contributor to any publication). Conceived as a performance-based editorial residency, The New City Reader was designed as part of the exhibition the Last Newspaper, which run at New York’s New Museum from 6 October 2010 to9 January 2011. Each issue was curated and put together by a different team, and dealt with a different theme, each one a typical section in a regular newspaper: ‘Editorial’, ‘Food’, ‘Leisure’, ‘Weather’. All of them stood alone as complete issues, but could be joined together to make a sort of meta-newspaper. I didn’t make it to all issues, but still contributed some ten cartoons to the series (and even reused some of them here and there).
Numerus Klausus for Uncube (2013-2016)
Back in 2013, Jessica Bridger, then Editor, contacted me, informing of a new online magazine, created in 2012 under the umbrella of Baunetz Media, which had already put together a few impressive issues. The magazine was Uncube: She asked me if I could come up with something for them, and my response was ‘Numerus Klausus’, a series of strips that found me sitting at my drawing board reflecting about some current architectural news. The idea of working with a template seemed interesting (And time-saving), but, although it stayed till the very end, the strip was soon upgraded into something more drawing-intense, especially after Sophie Lovell took over the editorial chores later in that year. Some 30 entries were produced until 2016, when the magazine was unfortunately shut down. All issues are still available to read online at their website here.
ArquiNoir by Klaus (Arquine, 2014-ongoing)
Starting with issue #67 (Spring 2014), Mexican leading architectural magazine Arquine started publishing Arquinoir, a section consisting of both a text and a cartoon which I envisioned as a mixture of Reyner Banham’s columns for New Society, and André Franquin’s ‘Idees Noires’. Only my total lack of ability at producing either determined the evolution of the series, which are less ‘Noir’ than I would have liked, but, on the good side, have given me the opportunity to write longer pieces and even try my hand at doing two-page comics, sometimes taking over 4 full pages of the magazine. Will they ever be collected in a book? Who knows?
Interchange for A10 (2014-2016)
Back in February 2014 (see the pattern here), I got an email from Indira van’t Klooster, then editor-in chief (currently director of Arcam, the Amsterdam Architecture Center) for A10: New European Architecture, the Amsterdam-based journal founded in 2004 by architecture critic Hans Ibelings and graphic designer Arjan Groot. Indira was starting a new section, ‘Interchange’, where she would interview a series of ‘young’ architectural practices, which she wanted to accompany with “a full-page drawing that explains the interview, is a comment on it, sharp, true but nice. Funny, but to the point.” For some reason she thought I could provide that, so 6 cartoons were commissioned, although ultimately 10 were published, plus an unfinished one, when the magazine (unfortunately again) folded in in 2016.
Other publications
A collection of other text and cartoons published in journals such as Arq, Arq’a, AD – Architectural Design, The Architectural Review, Bitácora Arquitectura, Clog, Conditions, eVolo, Harvard Design Magazine, (In)Forma, MAS Context, Praxis, Project International, Thresholds, Volume, as well as a bunch of books.
Exhibitions
An overview of those times where my editors and other nice people have taken me out from my hermit life either virtually, in the form of exhibitions around the world (in Cambridge (MA), Chicago, London, Mexico, Naples, Portugal, or Venice)…
Conferences, round tables et al.
…or physically, inviting and inciting me to lecture abroad. Thank you, guys.
Klaustoon 