On this typeface I will build my city!

[imomus]

For almost ten years now the British artist Paul Noble has been making intricate large-scale pencil drawings of an imaginary town. He calls it Nobson New Town, after himself. Sometimes Nobson looks like a Northern English town with lots of housing estates, sometimes it has more of a sci-fi, Sim City sort of look, complete with Disneyesque outcrops of rock and phallic Tolkein-style bridges.



Nobson is practical and detailed enough to be considered a blueprint for a real town. It has all the facilities: a chemical waste plant, a ruined castle for the tourists, and even a palace -- Paul's palace, a fantasy home for the artist, overlooking a dramatic seashore.

I don't know if Noble considers himself an architect, but as a town planner he's a great graphic designer: many of the town's basic forms are modeled on a 1970s Letraset font called Block Up. His town, should it ever be built, will be great to read from the air: as towns go, it'll make a great book.

And why shouldn't Nobson be built one day? Real architects like Rem Koolhaas started as fantasists, progressing from far-fetched books like Delirious New York to actual buildings in the city (I refer, of course, to the Prrrrrrrada store, darling). Video artist Vito Acconci now has an architecture studio and recently built a store in Daikanyama for fashion label United Bamboo. (As an architect, Acconci is a great radio presenter.) Noble has produced a book based on Nobson -- how long before he gets to build the real thing? In 3D Letraset and concrete, please.

Comments

[(Anonymous)]

Fantastic! Have you seen Thomas Schutte's dysfunctional architectural models ? all staircases leading nowhere, and rooms with no floors.

Rob

[femme-letale.livejournal.com]

I loved Paul Noble's exhibition at the Whitechapel Gallery... What I did not know about was this Rem Koolhaas chap. What a stunning space! Thanks!

[(Anonymous)]

Reminds me of some of Marc Bell's new stuff
http://www.adambaumgoldgallery.com/Bell_Marc/BellExhibGuston.htm

[imomus.livejournal.com]

Yeeees... Except that Paul Noble is more like MC Escher, and Marc Bell is (explicitly) making a tribute to Philip Guston (with a bit of Robert Crumb thrown in).

There are a lot of people using the "god's eye view" of towns and cramming details in. Here in Berlin we have eBoy (http://www.eboy.com/browse/ecity/cities), and in Japan there's Akira Yamaguchi (http://mizuma-art.co.jp/news/yamaguchi04_e.htm).

[(Anonymous)]

These artists are autistic-tastic!

[uberdionysus.livejournal.com]

I love all of those artists, and I, for one, would love to see Paul Noble's stuff in human scale 3-D!

Floodscape

[qscrisp.livejournal.com]

Related in a broad, architectural sense, this. (http://quentinscrisp.blogspot.com/2005/03/floodscape-this-evening-i-attended-st.html)

City Constructor

[seamusandjamal.livejournal.com]

http://www.m-city.org/m-city/konstruktor/konstruktor_galeria.html

Black and White, rather enjoyable. Has a cute noir feel to it.

Re: City Constructor

[imomus.livejournal.com]

I like the look of that very much. I wonder what Paul Noble would make with it?

[lord-whimsy.livejournal.com]

More of a fan of A.G. Rizzoli: http://www.amesgallery.com/ArtistPages/Rizzoli.html

[palux-negro.livejournal.com]

I designed a type wich was made with very small houses and buildings, and bold and semi-bold was actually the city in winter and autumn seasons.

[waited4thisday.livejournal.com]

14 people responded to this which means noone gives a shit about some homosexual artist trying to escape this cruel heterosexual world.

[imomus.livejournal.com]

Your point is a very silly one. Not that it makes the blindest bit of difference, but Paul is in fact a heterosexual. His girlfriend is Georgina Starr, also an artist. You're also wrong about the orientation of the world. It's gay. I know this because it phoned me the other day and came out.