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Architectural Cartoons Recorded

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D. D. Degg Published: August 7, 2025 Updated: August 8, 2025 1 minute 3 comments

Architecture is, without question, a serious matter—and, over the centuries, some of the most serious voices in the field have endeavored rigorously to theorize about, define, and interpret it. But what happens when we confront this monumental gravitas through the levity? What if we momentarily set aside the lofty and arcane discourse of celebrated architects and professional critics, and instead turn our attention to satire, humor, irony, and parody? What if, rather than revisiting Palladio’s Four Books of Architecture, we explored the 4,000 or so cartoons that have ridiculed architecture through the ages?

In 1824, in London, an insolent caricature by the great artist George Cruikshank depicted the celebrated architect John Nash impaled on the spire of his own All Souls Church at Langham Place, guilty of having created “a disgrace,” as one member of the House of Commons called it.

Gabriele Neri for Architectural Record takes a look at cartoons about architecture. (Or here.)

And today? Targets certainly abound, as do the means of expression and communication—from the now old-fashioned yet still effective cartoon to the many forms that have cropped up on social media.

With a special note about New Yorker cartoonist Alan Dunn (1900-1974):

If the Sydney Opera House looked like a turtle orgy, the Parisian Centre Pompidou resembled an oil refinery, and Breuer’s Whitney Museum evoked anything but what it actually was: “Why can’t they design a museum that doesn’t have to be explained?” asked the illustrator Alan Dunn, who generously contributed to The New Yorker but also to Architectural Record, where he published one cartoon every month for nearly 40 years. For his work, he was awarded the 1973 Architecture Critics’ Citation by the American Institute of Architects, formally sealing the bond between cartoon and criticism.

A selection of Alan Dunn architectural cartoons from The Last Lath.

See CartoonStock for more architectural cartoons.

feature image by Rich Tenant