The first appearance of the iconic Daily Planet building in the “The Arctic Giant,” the fourth episode of the Superman cartoon created by Fleischer Studios. Original airdate: February 26, 1942

This is an interesting article from Design Decoded:

Though well known today, the Daily Planet building wasn’t always so critical to the Superman mythos. In fact, when the Man of Steel made his 1938 debut in the page of Action Comics #1 , it didn’t exist at all. Back then, Clark Kent worked for the The Daily Star , in a building of no particular architectural significance because, well, there was no significant architecture in those early comics. The buildings were all drawn as basic, generic backdrops with little distinguishing features that did little more than indicate some abstract idea of “city”.

Clark Kent working at The Daily Star in Action Comics #1. Rest assured, Superman puts a stop to the wife-beating mentioned in the final panel. (image: Art by Joe Shuster, via Comic Book Resources)

As noted by Brian Cronin, author of Was Superman a Spy ? and the blog Comic Book Legends Revealed , Kent’s byline didn’t officially appear under the masthead of a paper called The Daily Planet until the 1940 Superman radio show, which, due to the nature of the medium, obviously couldn’t go into great detail about the building. That same year, The Daily Star became The Daily Planet.

But the lack of any identifiable architecture in these early representations of the Planet hasn’t stopped readers from speculating on the architectural origin of the most famous fictitious edifices in funnybooks. Unsurprisingly, Cleveland lays claim to the original Daily Planet. But so too does Toronto. And a strong case can be made for New York. So what was the true inspiration behind the iconic Daily Planet building?

Continue reading on the Design Decoded blog…

Arkham asylum was first created by Dennis O’Neil in 1974. He named the asylum after a town in the stories of horror writer H.P. Lovecraft. Lovecraft originally created Arkham as an apocryphal analogue of Salem, Mass. The Lovecraft story, “The Thing on the Doorstep” features the Arkham Sanitarium. Though today Arkham is portrayed as a psychotic madhouse and/or high security prison, in the early days of Arkham Asylum in comics, it had a slightly more whimsical vibe. For example, the Joker kept a full functional lair beneath the asylum – his own skewed version of a batcave.

Lovecraft’s inspiration was likely the The Danvers State Hospital, also known as the State Lunatic Hospital at Danvers, The Danvers Lunatic Asylum, and The Danvers State Insane Asylum, was a psychiatric hospital located in Danvers, Massachusetts. Built in 1874 and opened in 1878, the hospital was designed by  Boston architect Nathaniel Jeremiah Bradlee on an isolated, rural site according to the Kirkbride Plan .

While the asylum was originally established to provide residential treatment and care to the mentally ill, its functions expanded to include a training program for nurses in 1889 and a pathological research laboratory in 1895. In the 1890s, Dr. Charles Page, the superintendent, declared mechanical restraint unnecessary and harmful in cases of mental illness. By the 1920s the hospital was operating school clinics to help determine mental deficiency in children. Reports were made that various, and inhumane shock therapies, lobotomies, drugs, and straitjackets were being used to keep the crowded hospital under control. This sparked controversy. During the 1960s as a result of increased emphasis on alternative methods of treatment, deinstitutionalization, and community-based mental health care, the inpatient population started to decrease.

Massive budget cuts in the 1960′s played a major role in the progressive closing of Danvers State hospital. The hospital began closing wards and facilities as early as 1969. By 1985, the majority of the original hospital wards were closed or abandoned. The Kilbride administration building closed in 1989. Patients were forced out to live on the streets abruptly and were given less than optimal future care. The entire Danvers State Hospital campus was closed on June 24, 1992. After abandonment, the wards and buildings were left to decay and rot for many years until the demolition.

FICTIONAL HISTORY

Arkham Asylum is the home for the criminally insane denizens of Gotham City. But, as Director Jeremiah Arkham will tell you, it’s much more than that: “Arkham Asylum is not just any institution for the criminally insane. It’s the Ivy League of insanity.”

Arkham Asylum was founded by Amadeus Arkham after his mother, having suffered from mental illness most of her life, committed suicide. As the sole heir to the family estate, Amadeus Arkham decided to transform his family home (known as Mercey Mansion) into a treatment facility for the mentally ill, so that others might not go untreated and suffer as his mother had.

Upon telling his family of his plans, they moved back to his family home to oversee the remodeling. While there, Arkham received a call from the police notifying him Martin “Mad Dog” Hawkins — a serial killer referred to Arkham by Metropolis Penitentiary while at State Psychiatric Hospital — had escaped from prison, and sought his considered opinion on his state of mind. Hawkins later broke into the Arkham family home and brutally murdered Arkham’s wife and daughter.

Despite this tragedy, the Elizabeth Arkham Asylum for the Criminally Insane officially opened that November. One of its first patients was Martin Hawkins, whom Arkham insisted on personally treating. Arkham got his revenge on Hawkins when he strapped him to the electroshock couch and purposely electrocuted him. The deaths of his family and his murder of Hawkins were the first steps on Arkham’s path to madness. Eventually, he was institutionalized in his own hospital, and would remain there until his death. Custodianship of Arkham Asylum passed down to his nephew Jeremiah.

Jermiah Arkham took a hardline approach towards the care of his patients. He completely renovated the interior of the hospital, tearing away the old Victorian-style architecture, replacing it with labyrinthian corridors designed to confuse the inmates so that even if they got loose within the asylum, they would find it difficult to escape. Arkham installed the most state-of-the-art security measures when he took control of the asylum. CCTV cameras were installed in every room and corridor with guards stationed on every level twenty-four hours a day to discourage bribery. Even the director himself was required to present identification to access various levels of the hospital. All exterior windows at Arkham were installed with heat detectors and microwave motion detectors. Magnetic foils in the walls were used to block radio waves from penetrating locked cells. Even with these new security protocols, the most devious inmates found ways to escape the asylum. Because what Arkham did not know, was that the contractors he hired to build his new labyrinth had been blackmailed by an asylum inmate into building a secret corridor that connected to several padded rooms, including his own. This would essentially enable several inmates to escape at their leisure.

Indeed, even without this secret passage system, the most vicious inmates of Arkham frequently find devious (and not so devious: on at least one occasion, a convicted murderer was signed out of Arkham into the care of an incontinent, alcoholic vagrant, on the grounds that he “looked like a responsible citizen”) ways to escape incarceration.

Arkham asylum is often damaged by escape attempts. At one point, the original Arkham Asylum suffered massive structural damage when the criminal Bane orchestrated a large-scale break-out, setting dozens of patients free.

Arkham may truly be a case of “inmates running the asylum,” as some believe that Arkham itself drives people insane. This is evidenced by the fact that several staff members, including at least one director, have becomes inmates – most notably Dr. Harleen Quinzel (aka Harley Quinn), Dr. Jonathan Crane (aka Scarecrow), and even asylum director Dr. Jeremiah Arkham.

COMIC HISTORY

Arkham asylum was first created by Dennis O’Neil in 1974. He named the asylum after a town in the stories of horror writer H.P. Lovecraft. Lovecrafted originally created Arkham as an apocryphal analogue of Salem, Mass. The Lovecraft story, “The Thing on the Doorstep” features the Arkham Sanitarium. Though today Arkham is portrayed as a psychotic madhouse and/or high security prison, in the early days of Arkham Asylum in comics, it had a slightly more whimsical vibe. For example, the Joker kept a full functional lair beneath the asylum – his own skewed version of a batcave.

What if Bruce Wayne wanted to demolish Penn Station in order to surreptitiously construct an auxiliary Batcave beneath the new building? That, in essence, is the plot of Chip Kidd’s new graphic novel Batman: Death by Design. Though a few familiar faces –and grins– make an appearance, Death by Design is, for better and worse, a comic book about architectural preservation and the construction industry.

[left: Boston Avenue Methodist Church; center & right: sketches of Wayne Central]

Of course, there is no Penn Station in Gotham City. Instead, a thinly-veiled proxy is presented in the form of Wayne Central Station. Every action, every conflict, and every single character in this story is motivated by the desire to either preserve or demolish this building, which is part high rise, part train station, and part Tower of Babel. Because it plays such a central role in Death by Design , artist Dave Taylor did a lot of research before finalizing its design. His choices are inspired. The exterior of Wayne Central is drawn from the Boston Avenue Methodist Church in Tusla, Oklahoma, designed by Adah Robinson and Bruce Goff . With a little chiaroscuro, the Art Deco building fits perfectly into the Gothic-deco skyline of Gotham. The interior, however, is pure Penn Station. Designed by McKim, Mead and White in 1910, New York’s Pennsylvania Station was one of the greatest examples of Beaux-Arts Architecture in the United States. It’s destruction in 1963, and the subsequent construction of Madison Square Garden, sparked an re-evaluation of New York’s self-proclaimed “master builder” Robert Moses and acted as the catalyst for preservation movements across the United States, most notably New York’s own Landmarks Preservation Committee .

[left: Wayne Central Station, Gotham; right: Pennsylvania Station, New York]

In a recent interview, Kidd described his experience with Penn Stations current subterranean incarnation:

“…as somebody who takes Amtrak a lot, I’m always in and out of Penn Station and it’s an absolute travesty. Basically — for one of the most active travel hubs on the east coast of the United States – it’s more or less is a fluorescent-lit airless basement below Madison Square Garden, and it’s just horrible. And almost as a cruel joke, when you’re down there, they have these pictures up on the grimy tiled walls of the old Penn Station – this big, glorious space. They’re hanging around on the walls practically mocking you with how beautiful it used to be, as opposed to how shitty it is now”

Kidd’s observation, shared by every single person who has ever been forced to set foot in that rhizomatic dungeon, brings to mind a remark by architecture historian Vincent Scully . In describing the transformation of Penn Station, Scully wrote something like “we used to enter the city like gods, now we scurry in like rats.” In Death by Design , Bruce Wayne hopes to replace his proxy Penn Station with a radical new design by noted European architect Ken Roomhaus –a proxy even even more thinly-veiled than Penn Station– so he can flutter in like a bat, or as the architect says, be “spat out onto the sidewalk.”

[Ken Roomhaus and his design for the new Wayne Central Station]

In lieu of his usual bevy of supervillains, Death by Design presents Batman –and Bruce Wayne– with an unusual rogues gallery made up of a beautiful preservationist and an investigative architecture critic (of all the fantasies in Death by Design , “investigative architecture critic” is perhaps the most unbelievable). The cast is rounded out by devious contractors, reclusive architects, and a mysterious new costumed vigilante named Exacto – as in knife. Kidd has described Exacto as “Batman villain as architecture critic,” though that’s not quite right. He’s more of a proactive agent of the building department. Exacto makes his debut by warning dancers on a glass-floored nightclub high above the streets of Gotham: “The stresses on this structure were improperly calculated!” Along with incorporeality and teleportation, Exacto’s superpowers seem to include unlimited access to classified construction documents and forged union contracts. As more and more construction accidents befall Gotham, its citizens are left to wonder: who is the mysterious Exacto? Is he causing these accidents or are his intentions purely to combat faulty construction? Those questions are only two of the many mysteries that drive the plot of Death by Death .

Unfortunately, there are too many mysteries: collapsing cranes, demolished buildings, the disappearance of a famous architect, and, for good measure, an old-fashioned kidnapping. The story’s ambitions are too great, and it fails to fulfill the promises it makes. Chip Kidd is famed as a graphic designer but this is his first foray into writing comics. Though he’s crafted a heroic, convoluted narrative that could have come out of The Fountainhead or Robert Moses era New York, at times his inexperience with the medium shows. The story is beautiful but flawed with a rushed ending and plot threads that seemed to get snipped too short. And while his enthusiasm for architecture is appreciated, Kidd creates an apocryphal architectural jargon that is completely awkward and unnecessary. Roomhaus’s work is alternately described as “Maxi-minimalism” and “Mini-maximalism,” while the clearly Art Deco Wayne Central Station is described as “the single best example of Patri-monumental Modernism in America.” These terms not only takes the story out of a fictional golden age and into a full-on alternate dimension but also undermine the extensive research done by the book’s writer and artist, whose stunning drawings make up for any shortcomings. Taylor took his stylistic cues from Kidd, who as the story’s “art director” gave his artist a mandate that can be summed up on one very specific question: “What if Fritz Lang had a huge budget to make a Batman feature film in the 1930?” Indeed, many set pieces and entire scenes seem in Death by Design seem to be drawn straight from Lang’s Metropolis .

[left: Batman fights through a crowd in Death by Design; right: a scene from Fritz Lang’s Metropolis ]
A massive debt is also owed to the work of 1920s-1930s architectural renderer Hugh Ferriss . Ferriss’s renderings were the inspiration for Tim Burton’s vision of Gotham City and subsequently shaped the image of the city in the comics as well. Taylor’s pencils evoke Ferriss’s renderings without being derivative. The black and white monolithic Art Deco buildings of Gotham place the story firmly in the era of Ferriss’s iconic and much sought-after renderings. It also reveals, in surprisingly detail, the difficulties of getting such massive skyscraper builts in a city like Gotham or New York. To make sure this process was described realistically –as realistically as possible in a story involving teleporting masked vigilantes– Kidd consulted with friend and architect Bart Voorsanger . Artist Dave Taylor notes :

“The book contains some of the truth behind how a city is built, literally. The corruption, and misplacement of power rings true to the point of making this book a timely record. But what this book does above all is show how easy it can be to bring that corruption and power down, all you need is one hero!”

Even with its the overwrought plot, Death by Design is an entertaining paean to Batman and to architecture that wears its heart firmly on its cape. It really is exciting to see architecture presented as the driving force of a comic book plot instead of just background scenery. The Architecture of Gotham has always been integral to the Batman myth ( As I’ve previously noted ), and Kidd and Taylor articulate that connection in an exciting and innovative way. Buildings are represented heroically and heroes are revealed to be mere men, struggling against the very city they created.
[Batman soars above Gotham City in Batman: Death by Design ]

Death by Design also alludes to larger questions about architecture, important questions. What makes a monument? How can we preserve tradition while still embracing innovation? What is the value of an architect’s legacy? To some, it may seem silly to look toward comics for these answers, but Batman has been around since 1939 and his history has been not only preserved, but enriched and updated for a modern audience – even when it takes the form of a retro-pulp story. If Batman has taught us anything, it’s that the past invariably shapes who we are. It cannot and should not be forgotten or ignored, for by looking to the past we can certainly find timeless lessons that shape the people we are and the cities in which we live. But we cannot dwell on the past completely; we cannot let it consume us. In order to truly resonate with a contemporary audience, an expression of tradition must reflect current social and technological realities. It’s like I’ve always said: as goes Batman, so goes architecture.

[portions of this post originally appeared on Life Without Buildings ]

Having survived the Pinkney bombings , the Gotham earthquake, and No Man’s Land , the Gotham City Police Department Headquarters is one of the oldest and most resilient landmarks in the city. Located in Old Gotham, the Cyrus Pinkney -designed building serves as the primary headquarters for the dedicated officers of the Gotham City Police Department. Though the building has seen many attacks from vandals, criminals, and super-villains, it is always rebuilt to continue upholding the law and order in a city embattled with crime and corruption.

It is said that when Solomon Zebedia Wayne finished his first tour of Gotham Village, he gazed upward and mumbled a prayer of thanksgiving. He had found his home, his vocation, and the source of his eventual fortune. When young Wayne came to Gotham with a Harvard degree, a law book and a Bible, the settlement was languishing despite an almost ideal location, with the Atlantic Ocean on one side and an inland river on the other – the same kind of location that had already made Gotham’s neighbors, Boston, New York and Metropolis, powerful urban centers.

“There were a lazy lot,” Wayne later said of the Gothamites. “Oh, they were burdened with other vices too, among them a gluttony which they entertained so long as it did not require effort of them. They were also formidably stupid. But indolence was their primary sin. It was as though the whole of them were cursed with sloth. I feel, however, that with divine assistance, my gifts are ideally suited to bring about a blessed and beneficial change.”

Solomon prevailed on a classmate’s father to help him obtain a federal judgeship and then, with what a contemporary described as “zealous glee,” he began his campaign to reform Gotham. As a judge, he dispensed the harsh justice of an Old Testament patriarch and as an entrepreneur, he started a dozen businesses. Within six years, he was Gotham’s leading citizen, and its most posperous. But he was not satisfied.

“I feel that my efforts have been insufficient,” he wrote to an uncle in Boston. “There is here nothing of that focus of piety and industriousness that marks the mighty cities of Europe. Indeed, at times I feel that Evil Seeps into our precincts from the areas of Godless Nature which surround us, that the Dark One rides the winds that waft through our lanes from the corruption fo the woodlands, depositing lodes of Malice in our eaves and crannies.”

Solomon discovered what he believed to be Gotham’s salvation when he met Cyrus Pinkney, a young architect who appeared in his court as the victim of an assault. Pinkney, several years out of university and yet to find a commission, showed Judge Wayne his portfolio of sketches and plans, and found his patron. Pinkney’s vision coincided perfectly with Solomon Wayne’s. A few months later, in a speech to the Property Holders Association, Wayne asked “What is a city, gentlemen? A sanctuary! A stronghold! A fortress! A bulwark against the godlessness of the wilds wherein we may nurture the fits of Christian civilization and be protected from the savagery which lurks in untamed nature.”

In Pinkey’s buildings, Wayne saw his fortress. He sold most of businesses, borrowed as much money as he could, persuaded anyone who would give him a hearing to do likewise and commissioned the first of the so-called “Gotham Style” structures to be built in what is now the center of the City’s financial district. Although vehemently criticzed by Wayne’s fellow Gothamites, the edifice pleased the judge and, in fact, was highly successful in that it attracted others to locate their ventures nearby – became, in fact, the focal point for a thriving commercial center. Together, Wayne and Pinkney raised no fewer than a dozen other, similar buildings. Pinkney’s style was, for a time, widely imitated, both in Gotham and elsewhere – this despite vilification from virtually every architectural journal in the world.

Pinkney died while still a young man, on the eve of his fortieth birthday. Solomon Wayne lived to be 104, long enough to see all his dreams realized; Gotham City became the busting hub of industry he had imagined. But it also became a haven for crime, known more for its poverty, the squalidness of its slums and the utter corruption of its government than for commercial and cultural achievements. On his deathbed, Solomon Wayne said, “I wished to lock evil out of men’s neighborhoods and hearts. I fear instead I have give it the means to be locked in.”

[Text excerpted from Batman Legends of the Dark Knight, No. 27: Destroyer, Part 2 ]

As the world’s greatest detective begins to uncover the motives for the seemingly random guerrilla demolitions, he discovers another Gotham, “an older city, of improbable curves and angles – a city forgotten, that had been overshadowed and buried, suffocated by the towers of the 20th century.” Suddenly, in the type of realization that can only be expressed in with thought bubbles, the Caped Crusader understands the bomber’s motive. “He’s doing it…for art!”

Although it works quite well as an independent story, “Destroyer” is perhaps most notable as lead-in to Tim Burton’s first Batman film. By aggressively redesigning the skyline of Gotham, the Mad Bomber was conveniently creating a cityscape more comparable to the Gotham envisioned by Tim Burton. Thus, when new readers, attracted by the movie, pick up a Batman comic book, the Gotham City they see on the pages resembles the Gotham of the movie. The story was really all about attracting new readers and selling more comics.

The cover of each issue in the “Destroyer” series features a traditionally drawn Batman swinging in front of a harsh, black & white charcoal drawings of Gotham City. Drawings that channel the spirit of famed architectural delineator Hugh Ferris, filtered through the Carcerci etchings of Piranesi. Where Ferriss eschews detail for monumentality, the renderings of Gotham City by Academy Award-winning production designer Anton Furst, are bursting with a detail and chiaroscuro that put the “goth” in Gotham, creating an unmistakably Burtonesque world: shadowy Neogothic spires dripping with gargoyles and danger. It’s populace on the brink of insanity.

In the “Destroyer” storyline we learn that the religious fanatic architect Cyrus Pinkney was hired by the equally moralist Judge Solomon Wayne, an ancestor of Batman’s alter-ego, Bruce Wayne. For Solomon Wayne, a city should be a sanctuary, a fortress protecting culture and civility from the “godlessness of the wilds.” For Pinkney, Gotham needed structures to defend itself from the evil spirits responsible for corrupting man. Through a mystical epiphany, the Mad Bomber came to believe that Pinkney’s buildings literally kept “the demons” at bay. Cities have the power to effect the consciousness of its inhabitants and the ubiquitous gargoyles of the “Gotham Style” were intended to frighten people onto the path of righteousness.

Ferriss himself acknowledges such emotional and behavioral effects of architecture, saying in his book The Metropolis of Tomorrow, “it has been our habit to assume that a building is a complete success if it provides for the utility, convenience and health of its occupants and, in addition, presents a pleasing exterior. But this frame of mind fails to appreciate that architectural forms necessarily have other values than the utilitarian or even others than those which we vaguely call the aesthetic. Without any doubt, these same forms quite specifically influence both the emotional and the mental life of the onlooker. Designers have generally come to realize the importance of the principle stated by the late Louis Sullivan, ‘Form follows Function.’ The axiom is not weakened by the further realization that Effect follows Form.” Ferriss’ iconic and much sough-after renderings were specifically designed to communicate the emotional influence of architecture – not necessarily what the building is, but the power it has.

Through the filter of the bomber’s insanity, Batman is, ironically, seen as one of the demons corrupting the city. Indeed, as drawn in this series, Batman is a kind of expressionist demon; cloaked in shadows and violent movement of swirling of cape and cowl. But is he a demon, or is he a living manifestation of Gotham’s gargoyles? Of its stone protectors? A man shaped, perhaps unconsciously, by the gothic vaults and flying buttresses and monstrous sculptures of Cyrus Pinkney. A man who, like the city he protects, frightens the citizens onto the path of righteousness.

“Destoyer” closes with The Mad Bomber, ex-student / historian / Navy SEAL Andre Sinclair, surrounded by police and demolition crews, shooting defiantly at a wrecking ball swinging towards him. A futile, final act in defense of the individual dream against the unstoppable assault of society’s progress. As the wrecking ball rushes towards him, his earlier thoughts echo across the scene, “man is such a temporary thing. He lives, he sins, he dies. But a city can stand a thousand years. And a dream can last forever.” Unfortunately, the issue’s closing narration casts little hope for the nightmare that is Gotham City. “Cyrus Pinkney’s Gotham – gargoyles, to frighten people onto the path of righteousness – rounded edges to confuse the malevolent beings – thick walls to lock in virtue. The work of a madman!”

In fact, Gotham City really is the work mad men. First, a fanatically religious architect and his equally radical benefactor, who by shear force of will and moral certitude willed Gotham into existence in the hopes that the city would, in turn, will morality into its citizens. Then, years later, the Batman has his influence. Shaped by the perverse forms of the city itself, Batman has had as much effect on the psyche of Gotham as the spires and gargoyles of the city’s architect. Like Gotham, Batman is an indeal, a force of nature, an effect. But what effect is he having? Bruce Wayne’s ancestor realized too late that he may actually be responsible for the criminal fate of Gotham City. “I wished to lock evil out of men’s neighborhoods and hearts,” Solomon Wayne lamented on his deathbed. “I fear that instead I have given it the means to be locked in.” Let’s hope that his descendent doesn’t have the same regret.

So what came first, the city or the crime? the hero or the villain? The architect or the city?

In closing, another quote from Hugh Ferriss seems appropriate:

“The contemplation of the actual Metropolis as a whole cannot but lead us at last to the realization of a human population unconsciously reacting to forms which came into existence without conscious design. A hope, however, may begin to define itself in our minds. May there not yet arise, perhaps in another generation, architects who, appreciating the influence unconsciously received, will learn consciously to direct it?”

Text via Life Without Buildings

As the world’s greatest detective begins to uncover the motives for the seemingly random guerrilla demolitions, he discovers another Gotham, “an older city, of improbable curves and angles – a city forgotten, that had been overshadowed and buried, suffocated by the towers of the 20th century.” Suddenly, in the type of realization that can only be expressed in with thought bubbles, the Caped Crusader understands the bomber’s motive. “He’s doing it…for art!”

Although it works quite well as an independent story, “Destroyer” is perhaps most notable as lead-in to Tim Burton’s first Batman film. By aggressively redesigning the skyline of Gotham, the Mad Bomber was conveniently creating a cityscape more comparable to the Gotham envisioned by Tim Burton. Thus, when new readers, attracted by the movie, pick up a Batman comic book, the Gotham City they see on the pages resembles the Gotham of the movie. The story was really all about attracting new readers and selling more comics.

The cover of each issue in the “Destroyer” series features a traditionally drawn Batman swinging in front of a harsh, black & white charcoal drawings of Gotham City. Drawings that channel the spirit of famed architectural delineator Hugh Ferris, filtered through the Carcerci etchings of Piranesi. Where Ferriss eschews detail for monumentality, the renderings of Gotham City by Academy Award-winning production designer Anton Furst, are bursting with a detail and chiaroscuro that put the “goth” in Gotham, creating an unmistakably Burtonesque world: shadowy Neogothic spires dripping with gargoyles and danger. It’s populace on the brink of insanity.

In the “Destroyer” storyline we learn that the religious fanatic architect Cyrus Pinkney was hired by the equally moralist Judge Solomon Wayne, an ancestor of Batman’s alter-ego, Bruce Wayne. For Solomon Wayne, a city should be a sanctuary, a fortress protecting culture and civility from the “godlessness of the wilds.” For Pinkney, Gotham needed structures to defend itself from the evil spirits responsible for corrupting man. Through a mystical epiphany, the Mad Bomber came to believe that Pinkney’s buildings literally kept “the demons” at bay. Cities have the power to effect the consciousness of its inhabitants and the ubiquitous gargoyles of the “Gotham Style” were intended to frighten people onto the path of righteousness.

Ferriss himself acknowledges such emotional and behavioral effects of architecture, saying in his book The Metropolis of Tomorrow, “it has been our habit to assume that a building is a complete success if it provides for the utility, convenience and health of its occupants and, in addition, presents a pleasing exterior. But this frame of mind fails to appreciate that architectural forms necessarily have other values than the utilitarian or even others than those which we vaguely call the aesthetic. Without any doubt, these same forms quite specifically influence both the emotional and the mental life of the onlooker. Designers have generally come to realize the importance of the principle stated by the late Louis Sullivan, ‘Form follows Function.’ The axiom is not weakened by the further realization that Effect follows Form.” Ferriss’ iconic and much sough-after renderings were specifically designed to communicate the emotional influence of architecture – not necessarily what the building is, but the power it has.

Through the filter of the bomber’s insanity, Batman is, ironically, seen as one of the demons corrupting the city. Indeed, as drawn in this series, Batman is a kind of expressionist demon; cloaked in shadows and violent movement of swirling of cape and cowl. But is he a demon, or is he a living manifestation of Gotham’s gargoyles? Of its stone protectors? A man shaped, perhaps unconsciously, by the gothic vaults and flying buttresses and monstrous sculptures of Cyrus Pinkney. A man who, like the city he protects, frightens the citizens onto the path of righteousness.

“Destoyer” closes with The Mad Bomber, ex-student / historian / Navy SEAL Andre Sinclair, surrounded by police and demolition crews, shooting defiantly at a wrecking ball swinging towards him. A futile, final act in defense of the individual dream against the unstoppable assault of society’s progress. As the wrecking ball rushes towards him, his earlier thoughts echo across the scene, “man is such a temporary thing. He lives, he sins, he dies. But a city can stand a thousand years. And a dream can last forever.” Unfortunately, the issue’s closing narration casts little hope for the nightmare that is Gotham City. “Cyrus Pinkney’s Gotham – gargoyles, to frighten people onto the path of righteousness – rounded edges to confuse the malevolent beings – thick walls to lock in virtue. The work of a madman!”

In fact, Gotham City really is the work mad men. First, a fanatically religious architect and his equally radical benefactor, who by shear force of will and moral certitude willed Gotham into existence in the hopes that the city would, in turn, will morality into its citizens. Then, years later, the Batman has his influence. Shaped by the perverse forms of the city itself, Batman has had as much effect on the psyche of Gotham as the spires and gargoyles of the city’s architect. Like Gotham, Batman is an indeal, a force of nature, an effect. But what effect is he having? Bruce Wayne’s ancestor realized too late that he may actually be responsible for the criminal fate of Gotham City. “I wished to lock evil out of men’s neighborhoods and hearts,” Solomon Wayne lamented on his deathbed. “I fear that instead I have given it the means to be locked in.” Let’s hope that his descendent doesn’t have the same regret.

So what came first, the city or the crime? the hero or the villain? The architect or the city?

In closing, another quote from Hugh Ferriss seems appropriate:

“The contemplation of the actual Metropolis as a whole cannot but lead us at last to the realization of a human population unconsciously reacting to forms which came into existence without conscious design. A hope, however, may begin to define itself in our minds. May there not yet arise, perhaps in another generation, architects who, appreciating the influence unconsciously received, will learn consciously to direct it?”

Text via Life Without Buildings

Gotham City is undergoing one of the most expansive construction booms in its history. The most prestigious architects from across the globe have buildings in various phases of completion all over town. As chairman of the Gotham Landmarks Commission, Bruce Wayne has been a key part of this boom, which signals a golden age of architectural ingenuity for the city. And then, the explosions begin. All manner of design-related malfunctions–faulty crane calculations, sturdy materials suddently collapsing, software glitches, walkways giving way and much more–cause casualties across the city. This bizarre string of seemingly random, unconnected catastrophes threaten to bring the whole construction industry down. Fingers are pointed as Batman must somehow solve the problem and find whoever is behind it all.

The thematic inspiration for Death by Design came from the demoltion of New York City’s original Penn Station , which Kidd calls “one of the great architectural crimes of the twentieth century,” and the aesthetic of the comic is inspired by the question: “What if Fritz Lang had a huge budget to make a Batman feature film in the 1930?” The world of Fritz Lang’s film bears a close resemblance to the drawings of architectural renderer Hugh Ferriss, who influenced the early set design of Gotham City in the Tim Burton Batman Films. Kidd’s story focuses heavily on the architecture of Gotham City. In Death by Design , Kidd, with artist Dave Taylor, creates a new building for the Gotham City skyline: Wayne Central Station, an old, decrepit building built by Bruce Wayne’s father that has fallen in disrepair. There is a movement to tear it down that is opposed by one of the story’s main characters, an architectural preservationist. And although it was constructed by his father, Bruce Wayne is in favor of demolishing the building so he can surreptiously construct a Batcave annex underneath the new tower. The story also includes classic Batman villain The Joker, along with a new villain, X-acto, described as a “Batman villain as architecture critic.” Of X-acto, Chip Kidd says “He warns citizens, ‘This building is architecturally unsound and will soon collapse,’ the buildings falls over, and then he just vanishes. Is he making this happen or just warning us about faulty construction? We soon see that he’s a vigilante with his own agenda, exposing the rotten stuff of the Gotham City building trade.” To be clear, the project exists outside of classic Batman continuity, although it does bear a superficial resemblance to the “ Destroyer ” storyline in which an architectural historian destroys new buildings to reveal historic Gotham structures created by the famed architect of Gotham, Cyrus Pinkney.

Batman: Death by Design will is scheduled for release on June 5.

[images via comics alliance ]

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