Having grown up in a small, rural town in England, Anna Mill was automatically fascinated by cities and cityscapes. This passion for buildings and cityscapes is at the fore of her 256 page graphic novel “Square Eyes” (co-authored with Luke Jones), which started as a (four page) competition entry for The Observer, but became a fully-fledged published novel in 2018. As architects, the comic book format felt like a natural step—from one form of intricate, beautiful drawings to another. The story itself explores the ideal of augmented reality, merging a classical form of storytelling (the comic) with its futuristic, digital antithesis. For Anna, this explores the idea that in the future we might be able to add digital layers to a physical building, changing its appearance in the blink of an eye and, in turn, challenging her (original) practice through the medium of the comic book. In 2019, the novel was awarded a World Illustration Award. Anna also teaches architecture at both London Metropolitan University and the University of Nottingham.
