(((When imaginary worldbuilding efforts spin out of control, metabolizing every steampunk thing in their path.)))
http://www.thingsmagazine.net/index.htm
Link: things magazine: an online journal about objects and meanings.
The art of Francois Schuiten, creator of Les Cités Obscures (together with Benoit Peeters), a fantastical series of books about an alternative reality, obsessively detailed and chronicled. The sort of thing that might be lumped in with Steampunk, although the emphasis is more on urbanism and technology.
The official site, Urbicande, is lavish and inclusive, opening a whole world of fansites and source material. Obskur is another very good place to start, although there's are rather clunky sites at Les Cites Obscures and Tram 81. The Obscure Cities page is also a good English language resource, while the obscure dictionary chronicles the micro-managed history, objects, places and people that make up their world, like this gazetteer of the imagination.
Schuiten and Peeters painstakingly created a world that was part Metropolis, part Art Nouveau fantasy, extrapolating alternative histories, physics and even biologies (animals specific to the world include the aquatic Spongias, the bunyips and the Boustrophedon). Part of the world's internal consistency derives from the use of real people and places, intermingled with the fictional, but integral to the narratives. Thus Victor Horta becomes a central figure in the series. Schuiten and Peeters own the architect's Maison Autrique in Brussels, which they saved and restored. Through the restoration, the artists purported to find a 'passage' to the 'Obscure World' chronicled in their books, using historical characters as passeurs ('often artists, writers or architects') to facilitate moving between the two worlds.
