Friday 1 July 2016

atlas obscura

Messy Nessy Chic shares her discovery in a beautiful and winding gallery of the amazing art nouveau backdrops of Belgian illustrator Franรงois Schuiten.
Son to a dual-architect family and with echoes of the surreal, Schuiten was able to conjure up fantastic urban landscapes the graphic novel series Les Citรฉs obscures that debuted in the early 1980s and whose franchise—with spin-offs and with different collaborators over the years—continues to this day about the splintering of a parallel humanity into sovereign city states that fosters unique cultures and styles—sort of like the future that some internet tycoons have imagined of ocean-plying floating islands (or lassoed asteroids) of independence and popular consent. Schuiten’s imaginative artwork is furthermore a revolt (especially in the volume called Brรผsel) against the phenomenon known as Bruxellisation, one not exclusive to his native city and perhaps a rejuvenation effort that his parents were complicit in (or rallied against), wherein historic district were demolished in favour of utilitarian, almost brutally so, modern buildings—perhaps the vision of the above tycoons. Browse the extensive arcade of images and learn more about Les Citรฉs obscures and their contributing civil engineers at the link up top.