Supergraphics

We don’t have debates anymore about whether or not architecture is an art, but I don’t remember there ever having been an answer, as if we all agreed to be tired of the question. Yet, I do remember not too long ago when buildings of a certain kind were praised as “sculptural” even though sculpture comes in many shapes and sizes. It usually meant something irregular, apparently monolithic and frequently monumental because of the absence of human-scale indicators such as windows and floor levels. Buildings and sculpture of this kind both occupy three-dimensional space but, if I heard someone describe a piece of sculpture as “architectural”, then I’d have to ask how they meant it. In this post I don’t want to talk about layouts, performance, function or even symbolism. I’m only interested in the building envelope as a carrier for some applied graphic that makes some corner of the world a better place to be.

The conventional understanding of how the word sculptural applies to architecture is probably just the ripples of Le Corbusier’s famous definition even if the same can be said of sculpture, particularly if outdoors.

“Architecture is the masterly, correct, and magnificent play of masses¹ brought together in light. Our eyes are made to see forms in light: light and shade reveal these forms.”

The second, lesser known half is just Le Corbusier being Le Corbusier and restating the blindingly obvious as insight. Am I obtuse but isn’t it the case that, without light, nobody sees anything? Our eyes are made to see light whatever “forms” it’s reflected off or emitted by. Light enters our eyes and is processed by our brains so we can infer the shape of things whether architecture or not. I think the name for this type of logical fallacy is Affirmative conclusion from a negative premise.²

Inevitably, this led to us all thinking architecture is an art on par with sculpture. Architects like to talk of massing as if buildings were solid but what we perceive as masses are envelopes surrounding some usually useful space. Architecture could perhaps equally well be described as the masterly, correct, and magnificent play of surfaces brought together in light but this would then suggest architecture is more like painting. It’s odd how architects known for their “sculptural” buildings often dabble in the two-dimensional stuff.

Some buildings are attractive not so much because of their shape but because of the shapes or proportions of surface elements such as windows. The Gio Ponti building below is attractive because of the arrangement of variously proportioned windows and because the glazed cladding bricks change appearance depending on the direction of the light and whether or not they’re wet. Attractive as they are, this post is not concerned with architectural devices such as these. It is only concerned with applied graphics that aren’t architectural elements.

Dohtor 1953, Tōgō Murano

The building contains theatres and this is probably why this facade is almost a blank canvas. This is where I see a shift from the architectural expression of Ponti’s cladding bricks to the graphic expression of Murano’s cladding mosaic. It doesn’t seem particularly graphic but the graphic expression is conceptually detached from the building.

Maruei Building 1955, Tōgō Murano

The existence of the supergraphic on his Maruei Building two years later is less subdued. If the supergraphic on the Dohtor building errs on the side of quietness, then this one errs on the side of perfection.

Yahata Library³ 1955, Tōgō Murano

Murano’s Yahata Library of the same year is remarkable for taking the architectural elements of the slabs and columns and, with very few additions, treating them as an applied graphic appropriating the pattern of the structure for its own graphic ends. The structure itself is not the supergraphic. In passing, this supergraphic has nothing to do with the building being a library, although it could explain why there was so little money to realize it.

Central Library, National Autonomous University of Mexico 1956, Gustavo Saavedra and Juan Martínez de Velasco

This building was once a part of the history of architecture and I knew about it well before I learned about Tōgō Murano. I apologize for it not being in my 1956⁴ post. The mid-1950s look like they were the golden age of mosaic supergraphics even the word wasn’t to be coined until 1967, and then mostly with respect to interior supergraphics known at the time as Supermannerism. This building amazed me when I was about ten years old and I’m happy to remember it again now.

Miyakezaka Building 1965, architect not known

The building is located in the Nagatacho district that is Tokyo’s bureaucratic centre and so a fairly unvisited part of Tokyo. Perhaps that’s why what are probably an elevator lobby and stairwell are covered in this supergraphic mosaic titled Leap Forward (躍進) by Takeo Terada (寺田竹雄). I don’t understand why the All-Seeing Eye is there, let alone being where it can least see or be seen. What looks like the Rolex logo is also weird, as is the P in the eye’s pupil but, whatever it all means, the supergraphic improves the corner, has little or no connection to the occupants of the building, and isn;t advertising. This to me, is the essence of supergraphics: turning something unremarkable into something we are glad is there. Is it art? By this definition, probably.

Les Tours Aillaud⁵ 1977, Emile Aillaud

One of my favourite projects featuring supergraphics because it makes something unremarkable into something remarkable. As far as I know, surrounding residents haven’t petitioned to have these social housing buildings re-clad to make them appear less like social housing, and it’s probably because they didn’t look like it to begin with. These supergraphics have been criticized as cosmetic in the bad sense rather than being seen for what they are which is cosmetic in the good sense.

National Collegiate Football Hall of Fame 1967, Venturi, Scott Brown and Associates, Inc.

This next building appears out of sequence because it was before its time. The actual hall does have an architectural presence even it it’s acting as a foil to something like a drive-in theatre screen. As the year was 1967, the screen was (tens of?) thousands of small lights in the manner of the Monograph New Bulletin better known as The Times Square Ticker from 1928. Both have a place in the history of architecture that emits light as moving patterns. Given what we now know about the world, it’s difficult to imagine how imagery for a single subject could be produced fast enough to keep people’s attention or to keep them coming back. The Times Square Ticker didn’t have this problem as it displayed breaking news.

The word supergraphic was invented in 1967 but, according to the definition below, it wasn’t because of Venturi & Scott Brown.⁶

This building is also part of the history of light emitting buildings. Testing it against the above definition, I’d say it doesn’t alter our perception of the architectural environment but it did for a while alter our perception of what a building could be. The building is still very much there but we never forget we are looking at a building and its graphics.

People in New York and London aren’t so keen on the new daylight-readable LED displays that, unlike neon, can have their rentable areas dynamically re-assigned by area, location, day and time of day, etc. I don’t think people aren mourning the disappearance of architecture but maybe the warmth of the light and the assurance that the same advertisement being in the same place the next day. In 2021, the buildings behind one corner of Piccadilly Circus were demolished and redeveloped but the signs stayed operational throughout. [Big shoutout to Jon Maycroft for this photo and piece of information.] We don’t get to see what replaced the former buildings. Nor do we care.

I keep coming back to that building light-show I recently saw in Hangzhou⁷. Every evening, it begins around 7:30 and 8:30 but the time and duration aren’t precise, and before the show are teasers or “tuning-up” and after the performance may be an encore or two. The show seems to have the arbitrariness of a performer. For the first minute, it’s strange and compelling to see buildings doing this but the buildings are soon forgotten because the relationship is between light and our eyes. Supergraphics don’t require architecture. They only require a group of closely-spaced buildings of a certain size and preferably the other side of a river.

I know that Korean video artist Nam June Paik would prefer an architecture that emits light rather than one passively reflecting any light falling upon it. Once, when asked whether video was better than film he replied. “Film is like The Moon. It only reflects light. Video is like The Sun. It emits light.” Paik was also stating the obvious but he let us draw our own conclusions.

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1. My French-speaking friends tell me LC’s meaning (In French) was in the sense of “volumes” rather than “masses” (as in massing model). I’m not sure it matters. A balloon has volume but we perceive it by its surfaces. Large openings in building surfaces complicate matters but then we’re not talking about shapes (“shapes”) with simple geometries anymore. ↩︎
2. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_fallacies ↩︎
3. https://misfitsarchitecture.com/2024/11/24/yahata-library/ ↩︎
4. https://misfitsarchitecture.com/2026/04/19/1956/ ↩︎
5. https://misfitsarchitecture.com/2017/07/09/misfits-guide-to-paris/ ↩︎
6. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Supergraphics ↩︎
7. https://misfitsarchitecture.com/2026/05/10/misfits-guide-to-hangzhou-%e6%9d%ad%e5%b7%9e%ef%bc%89/ ↩︎