] 1. In Search for Lost Figuration
floorplan Palace of Typographic MasonryPALACE about
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The Typotectural Suites

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Building plate / poster 'In Search for Lost Figuration', Richard Niessen, 2019 silkscreen print: Lezart Graphique
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Building plate / poster 'In Search for Lost Figuration' at Alphabetum, West, Den Haag, Richard Niessen, 2019 (photo: Jhoeko (detail))
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Built model 'In Search for Lost Figuration' at Alphabetum, West, Den Haag, Richard Niessen, 2019 (photo: Jhoeko (detail))

1. In Search for Lost Figuration

The ambiguities between architecture and typography have been relentlessly exploited by authors of pictorial alphabets. These images take us beyond the purely mental, abstract and community relationship that we usually have with the letters of the Latin alphabet. It is legitimate to fight against the alphabet’s “geometric dryness”, and to aim to “rediscover image-words, drawings that speak, the sign-items of the first writings”.

In this first Suite you find Basoli’s famous Alfabeto Pittorico, but you will also meet Letterel, a tall, thin man with shoe-noses pointing upwards as the lower curl of the l.