PLAYING THE PICTURESQUE

Installation by You+Pea 24 Sep – 14 Dec 2019 Tue – Sat · 11am–5pm

Commisioned by RIBA YOU+PEA ASSOCIATED EVENTS

You+Pea is the architectural design in the design of virtual, interactive studio of Sandra Youkhana and game spaces to provoke Family Takeovers Saturdays, 28 Sep, 12 & 26 oct, 9 & 23 Nov, 7 Dec · 11am-2pm Fun and informal creative activities that explore our Luke Caspar Pearson. conversations about the real current exhibition. world. Their work explores the integration Spotlight tours Every Wednesday & Saturday · 12pm of videogame technologies into Sandra and Luke established and Free, bitesize introductory tours on our current exhibition architectural design, leading lead the Videogame Urbanism Spotlight tour Wed 25 Sep · 12pm conversations on how games studio at the Bartlett School of with Dr Amy Frost Free, bitesize introductory tour with special guest can engage new participants in Architecture, where they promote After Hours Thu 3 Oct, Thu 5 Dec · 5-8pm the design of cities. They have the use of game technologies in A free evening of music and creativity taught and lectured on the architectural education. You+Pea You+Pea Talk Thu 10 Oct · 6.30pm subject worldwide. You+Pea’s work work with cultural and educational Lecture and Q&A from architectural design studio, You+Pea operates between the design institutions, industry partners, Free, advance booking strongly recommended of architectural interventions developers, and city planners to Walking the Picturesque Sat 26 Oct · 10.30am and/or 2pm · £5, £4 (limited places) and virtual worlds, alongside bridge the gap between multiple Artist Richard White invites you to continue playing the developing critical theory that disciplines and provoke new picturesque on two walks underpins their connection. conversations about the future of Heritage Talk: Fri 8 Nov · 6.45pm · £5, £4 Art Pass architectural design through the Bath and the picturesque Guest speakers: Dr Amy Frost & Alice Palfrey You+Pea draws inspiration from use of games. speculative architecture of the Capturing the landscape Sat 2 Nov · 11am–4.30pm · £65 Photo walk workshop with Bill Ward past, producing new forms of architectural practice that result Exploring the picturesque Sat 23 Nov · 10am–4pm · £38 and the virtual Landscape drawing & painting workshop with artist Benjain Deakin

Discover more at edgearts.org HAMLET

Take a seat and enjoy a panoramic through complex roof forms Nine cottages, , , view of Blaise Hamlet. Gaze across and exaggerated chimneys. 1811 the bucolic village green for the Though built at the same time, the J. Herner, for signs of life animating the quaintly cottages are irregularly aligned individual stone cottages. and spaced around the undulating green, which has a sundial and In its image of rural perfection, pump in the middle (1815). Each Blaise Hamlet, located a short building is different, but with distance from Blaise Castle House, common design features, like tall is a complete work of architectural chimneys, dormer windows and scenography. Arranged around a overhanging eaves. The common bucolic ‘village green’, the idyllic feature of the bench encircling Diamond Cottage, Blaise Hamlet, Blaise Castle, composition invites an enjoyment each cottage underlines the Henbury: perspective with other cottages in the through inhabitation. Each cottage fact that this is a self-conscious background, 1800 is provided with a bench to arrangement, allowing interaction encourage residents to enjoy the Hugh O’Neill, for John Nash and delight in the pastoral setting. view onto the common green. Nash’s scheme went as far as The Hamlet was laid out and to include planting proposals to built in 1812 to designs by Nash, a clothe the walls and porches of the commission to build nine cottages cottages, further exaggerating the Images from the RIBA Collections to house former estate workers image of the ideal village. Blaise & other references and employees. A terraced walk Hamlet has been described as the runs past and links the cottages, epitome of Picturesque landscape all of which are substantial stone and design. buildings made more fanciful PALLADIAN BRIDGE

Reveal different follies from Prior and shell stone grotto. Park and beyond as reflections in Allen’s influence and desire to the pools beneath the garden’s cultivate views from his property Palladian Bridge. also extended beyond the garden, The defining feature of Prior Park to the creation of a sham castle near Bath, designed by Alexander on Claverton Down which has Pope and Capability Brown, is its a crenellated front façade and Palladian Bridge built in 1756, which a flattened rear. For Allen, these forms a visual centrepiece for designs were not only about views across the landscape. The refining a landscape for his own bridge was designed to be viewed pleasure but also to demonstrate from Prior Park House, completing the qualities and capabilities of Palladian Bridge a view down towards the centre Bath stone as a building material. of Bath while being mirrored in a These structures, together with the series of reflecting pools. bridge and other follies, became a The garden was developed picturesque landscape spreading by Ralph Allen whose various from the park and incorporating entrepreneurial endeavours the whole of Bath within it while included mines that extracted also celebrating the unique and sold Bath stone. The bridge materials of the area. represents the centrepiece of Prior Park’s picturesque approaches, which also included a sham bridge RUIN

Recompose a landscape of certain spatial information. romantic ruined follies, framed Often such views are illusory, within the view of a nearby cave. completed by the play of light, exaggerated scale, and blurring A drawing from Nash’s office the edges where the built fabric shows a folly in the form of a meets the natural environment. prehistoric tomb or Druid’s temple, The picturesque aesthetic invites intended for the grounds of the composition of idealised Blaise Castle House near . forms, arranged to orient the Designing follies was a favourite viewer by acting as markers in the preoccupation of eighteenth- landscape. century architects; this sketch was made by the George Stanley The fanciful, almost whimsical Repton, younger son of the highly nature of follies suggest the wealth Drawing from a sketchbook showing a folly in regarded landscape designer and the aspirations of the client, or the form of prehistoric tomb or Druid’s temple, Humphry Repton, and produced the architect. Both in paintings and Blaise Castle House, Henbury, 1800 while the former was working for real buildings, follies were often George Stanley Repton, for John Nash Nash. It followed the picturesque depicted in picturesque settings, belief in adding architectural mixing real and fictional scenarios. ornamentation to enhance a In Nash’s work, follies such as this naturalistic landscape, often prehistoric temple are repeatedly reminiscent of another time or used as motifs, transcending place. the immediate contexts and producing a moment of fictional Picturesque planning is based on delight. both withholding and revealing CASTLE

Uncover different routes around not really a castle, but a mock- The House is first seen behind the Blaise Estate; depending on the Gothic folly, and a popular the ‘foreground’ a woodsman’s path you take, you may encounter attraction since its completion cottage. Rather than taking a the woodsman’s cottage, the in 1766 – involved another close direct route to the house, the ruined mill, the house or the castle. collaboration with landscape drive takes a much longer and gardener George Stanley Repton. more scenic route, through The pleasure of the Picturesque Repton was responsible for the hanging woods and past a ruined can be found in the discovery of grounds of the mock castle; his mill. These ‘anchor points’ in the visual forms in space and time, design with Nash involved altering landscape were intended to rather than a static surface. the route through the property, surprise the viewer, delaying the At , Nash through a crenellated gate house desire to reach the castle and its developed his experiments and a long drive. Rather than extensive view. Instead, Nash and between architecture and coming directly off the road from Repton’s confections produce landscape, giving importance Bristol, the Georgian Blaise Castle sequences of visual rewards, to the journey as well as the House would now be approached building a sense of enjoyment destination. from the further London road – in the carefully composed, but Producing the Picturesque taking in Picturesque views along seemingly naturalistic landscape. Blaise Castle, near Bristol, 1766 experience at Blaise Castle – the way. Robert Mylne photo 1938 LONG WALK

Take the stately Long Walk in the Historic estate plans show that a grounds of Windsor Castle and small piece of land on each side explore how the natural landscape of the Long Walk was owned by a provides moments of surprise and private individual, who claimed to delight along its route. have road access across the Long Walk linking the two sides. To solve The Long Walk at Windsor Castle this right of access, and at the demonstrates how the idealistic same time providing a Picturesque romance of the Picturesque might point of interest in the landscape, serve the practical concerns faced Nash designed the triple-arched by an architect. Norman Bridge. The punctuation Before his coronation, the Prince of this architectural gesture brings Regent – later King George IV, and a sense of focus and destination Design for a proposed bridge in the castle a major patron of Nash – sought to the viewer, while suggesting a style for a roadway over the Long Walk, to extend a Royal Lodge in the fabricated history. Windsor Great Park, Windsor 1818 grounds of Windsor Castle as a John Nash large venue to entertain friends. At the same time, older structures such as the former Queen’s Lodge were demolished, and the sprawling grounds were tamed into a pleasing and picturesque landscape, accessed by the Long Walk. CRESCENT

Experience this now-familiar with coupled Ionic columns, which piece of London in its original, gives the crescent its elegant colonnaded glory – and reveal grandeur. This was a device Park Crescent as a complete integral to the whole of Nash’s ‘circus’ preceding Regent’s Park as overall New Street – now Regent it was originally intended. Street – yet it survives only here.

Situated very close to the RIBA Here, the Picturesque is reclaimed building, Park Crescent is part by the city, from its more usual of Nash’s theatrical, set-piece pastoral settings; the crescent scheme, providing a scenic link faces Regent’s Park, but both are from Kensington Palace and the unmistakably urban constructions. fashionable theatres of central Nash’s famous scheme shows Park Crescent, Regent’s Park, London: the east London to Regent’s Park. It was that relatively few buildings, acting side seen from the park originally conceived as a circus in concert, could have the effect (circle) to be named Regent’s of orchestrating a whole area of 1829 Circus, but only the bottom half London around a harmonious Thomas Hosmer Shepherd was ever built. vision. The effect of moving through this choreographed Its semi-circular profile offered a composition, exceeds the success dramatic, deep curve, which would of any singular building. not have been possible in the more usual designs for an elliptical crescent. The continuous ground- storey colonnade is punctuated