Nobson Newtown (1998)

Nobson Newtown (1998)
Paul Noble
Paperback, H17 x W120 mm, 32 pages with foldout map. Acquired from Marcus Campbell Art Books, 13 March 2021.
Photos: Books On Books Collection.

With Nobson Newtown, Paul Noble extends the tradition of alphabetical architecture to full-scale city planning and landscape architecture. Some of Antonio Basoli’s 19th-century designs — for example, the letter A — display a letter-shaped built environment, as does Steven Holl’s The Alphabetical City (1980), but in seaside Nobson Newtown, the buildings spell out words, and the mapped habitation (although without any depiction of inhabitants) rests on a founding myth as bizarre and misanthropic as its current civic arrangements.

In addition to a map of the town and the environs, Nobson Newtown includes a key to its alphabetical and typographic building blocks, which are, of course, rendered in Nobfont. Easy legibility is not a characteristic.

The Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen commissioned a film from Noble exploring Nobson Newtown, insightfully characterized as “an ever-incomplete inner landscape of the person building the town”.

Further Reading

“Abecedaries I (in progress)“, Books on Books Collection, 31 March 2020.

“Architecture“, Books on Books Collection, 12 November 2018.

“Federico Babina“, Books On Books Collection, 20 April 2021.

“Antonio Basoli“, Books On Books Collection, 20 April 2021.

“Antonio & Giovanni Battista de Pian“, Books On Books Collection, 20 April 2021.

“Jeffrey Morin“, Books On Books Collection, 20 April 2021.

“Richard Niessen“, Books On Books Collection, 20 April 2021.

“Johann David Steingruber“, Books On Books Collection, 20 April 2021.

Côme, Tony. “The Typotectural Suites“, The Palace of Typographic Masonry. Accessed 5 April 2021.

Holl, Steven. 1980. The alphabetical city. New York: Princeton Architectural Press.

Macken, Marian. 2018. Binding Space: The Book as Spatial Practice. London and New York: Routledge.

McEwen, Hugh. Polyglot Buildings. 12 January 2012. Issuu. Accessed 13 March 2021.

Noble, Paul, and Georgina Starr. “N is for Nobson“, ARTtube, 21 October 2018. Accessed 13 March 2021.

Polano, Sergio. January 2019. “Architectural Abecedari“, Casabella, 893, pp. 62-75 + 100-101 (eng.). Milan.

Tsimourdagkas, Chrysostomos. 2014. Typotecture: Histories, Theories and Digital Futures of Typographic Elements in Architectural Design. Doctoral dissertation, Royal College of Art, London. Accessed 13 March 2021.