The Forbidden Planet International Blog Log

Everybody who is even remotely interested in European comics, knows François Schuiten, the Belgian artist who, together with writer Benoît Peeters created the wonderful series, Les Cités Obscures.  Buildings and architecture play an important part in the stories in that cycle, which often deal with the struggle of a single human being against gigantic structures, which often seem to transcend space and time.  The fact that Schuiten’s father was an architect, will doubtlessly have contributed to this fascination with buildings and cities.

(page from François and Luc Schuiten’s Les Terres Creuses, published Les Humanoides)

Schuiten’s brother, Luc Schuiten, was even more directly influenced by his father.  Even though he created a series of comics together with François, the cycle Les Terres Creuses (1991-1990), Schuiten became a “real architect first and foremost, albeit one with a twist.  Even before it got hip, Schuiten was interested in the values of sustainability and ecology in his buildings.  From the mid-seventies onwards, he built houses that were self-sufficient in terms of energy production, and he consistently used organic, natural materials.

But Schuiten takes hs fascination with nature and ecology even further. He coined the term, archiborescence, to refer to architecture that makes use of living materials.  In Brussels, Schuiten created vertical gardens on the walls of decrepit buildings, in order to bring some natural variation on a monotonous urban environment.  Many of his more utopian designs feature large trees literally carrying the roofs over the heads of the city’s inhabitants.

Until August 30th, a big exhibition of Schuiten’s designs and projects is being organised in the Brussels Parc du Cinquantenaire.  In the Vegetal City tries to look into the future, and present a possible way out of the current ecological and climatological crises.  Cities should evolve into living things, with buildings that breathe and present a variation in shapes and colors that is not unlike nature.  With drawings and miniatures in a style not unlike his brother’s, he tries to show that this future is an inevitable consequence of the history of the city as it is represented today, and that it is the only way in which to go forward.

(cover to Vegetal City by Luc Schuiten, published Mardaga)

Whereas François predominantly uses classical architectural elements in his art, Luc presents cities that are embedded in nature, such as Canyon City, built in a Grand Canyon-like landscape, or the City Of Waves, which emulates the sea as a living organism.  His ideas range from the largest structure to the smallest details, from citywide transport systems to benches and lampposts.  They present fascinating frameworks to start imagining yourself, and even if you are not interested in this kind of utopian architecture, Luc Schuiten’s art is brilliant on its own.

Wim Lockefeer lives in Belgium where he is wondering if having a rubber tree plant next to the window of his home counts as being Schuitenesque. You can read more on his Ephemerist blog.