Houses with a Story by Seiji Yoshida
Seiji Yoshida’s Houses with a Story isn’t a graphic novel per se, but more like an architectural survey. Its pages are filled with floor plans and cutaway drawings of imaginary homes and buildings that are delightful, fantastical, and occasionally whimsical. The “World-Weary Astronomer’s Residence” (seen on the cover) is a monastic dwelling perched high atop a rock formation while the “Reserved Mechanic’s Cottage” makes for a pleasantly solitary life on a Montana lake. Located in the Tibetan mountains, the “Library of Lost Books” is a sprawling complex stuffed with tomes and possibly connected to another world while the humble “Clinic in the Woods” blends classic Japanese structures with Western influences. (And those are but four examples.) Yoshida draws inspiration from a variety of cultures and time periods for his designs, each of which is accompanied by lovely paintings, fun notes highlighting all manner of delightful and clever details, and a short intro to the dwellings’ inhabitants that sparks the imagination. Indeed, reading Houses with a Story left me in a constant state of “I want to go to there.”