Description:

Schuiten's graphic representations and architectural styles within Les Cités obscures is, among other historical themes, heavily influenced by Belgian Art Nouveau architect Victor Horta, who worked in Brussels at the turn of the 20th century. An important motif is the process of what he calls Bruxellisation, the destruction of this historic Brussels in favor of anonymous, low-quality modernist office and business buildings. Coming from a family of architects, Schuiten had many relatives, especially his father and brothers, who were instrumental in Bruxellisation, an important part in Schuiten's and Peeters' 1950s childhood memories of the city. Schuiten was brought up to study architecture by his father, both in university and early on at home, while young Schuiten preferred to pursue his escape to the world of Franco-Belgian bandes dessinées such as those he found in the magazine Pilote that his older brother introduced him to, with René Goscinny, Morris, and André Franquin among his early favorites.
Around 1980, having become an emerging established graphic novel artist who had made himself a name publishing in Métal Hurlant and creating a number of standalone albums, Schuiten began drafting a parallel world of vintage architectural splendor reflecting his childhood memories of Brussels, a world which can be reached primarily through remaining buildings of these times gone by. In an ongoing attempt to prevent the spread of knowledge of this parallel world, mostly faceless authorities in our world increasingly have these buildings torn down, and in Schuiten's world this was the true reason for chaotic, headless Bruxellisation where functional and organic buildings were destroyed in favor of ill-planned, useless, and confusing structures such as ill-planned roads, detours, freeways, and anonymous office buildings that destroyed the organic fabric of a city and resulted in dysfunctional traffic and living routines.