Bodo neuss

JOSEPH GANDY’S ENGLISH WINDS

BODO NEUSS London, D e c e m b e r 2 0 1 6 Architectural Association Year 4 The National Pavilion Tutor: C o s t a n d i s K i z i s

Joseph Gandy’s English Winds

Joseph Gandy’s name will always be associated with the designs of John Soane and the record of his professional work will to a great extent be limited to his pioneer work in the field of architectural rendering to which the Bank of England depicted as a ruin arguably forms a most crucial landmark.

His Designs for Cottages, Cottage Farms and other Rural Buildings from 1805 finds much less attention although one could assume that the consideration of the rural realities post-Brexit, even from an architectural point of view, could be of relevance in understanding the populist revival and in preventing a further polarisation of society. That is to say in view of the growing incline between city and country that evoked a new wave of nationalism which so far in Europe has hit England the hardest, it seems reasonable to take into account a proposal which in Gandy’s words was ‘[...] originating in the humane desire of increasing the comforts and improving the conditions of the labouring poor’.1 His proposal The Cottages of the Winds is an attempt to ‘[...] unite convenience and taste[...]’2 and in this spirit a perfect circular plan is cut into eight equally sized pie segments which form individual cottages, designated according to a compass direction of the winds in North, North-West, West, South-West, and so forth. In the center of the complex, a fountain or drain forms the midpoint of a circular courtyard, divided again into eight yards along the overall pie division, albeit here this division is indicated by single lines and thus suggests a fenced, rather than a walled partition. Between the two exterior walls, a third circular wall divides the individual cottages into the spaces towards the entrance and towards the yard. It furthermore houses the chimneys and carries the ridge of the roof. Whereas the bedroom takes over the entire space towards the yard - a niche opposite the yard door and supposedly for a bed forms the only architectural division here - the front of the house is further segmented by a non load-bearing wall into parlour and kitchen, each equipped with both a window and a fireplace. The larger kitchen area forms simultaneously the house entrance, while the parlour can only be accessed through the bedroom.

1 2

Gandy, Designs for Cottages and Cottage Farms , 3 Ibid, 2

Gandy’s design in this organisation is reminiscent of the Georgian terraced house which originated also in a separation of public and private space. Essentially, the extinction of the Enfilades in bourgeois houses marked the rise of privacy within domestic spaces and simultaneously the birth of the modern family at the beginning of the 18th century. That is by introducing corridors to connect a number of rooms for different functions for ‘[...] parents and children who are happy to live as a group separated from the rest of society.’3 The private life in Paris - and consequently in most of the continental capitals - settled elevated from the streets in town apartments which spread from the second storey upwards to provide intimate shelters within the city walls while the street level with its courts and squares, stores and cafés provided a public stage4 -- an image, much reminiscent of the medieval city organisation and visualised since the Renaissance in facades that consist of a rustication - a rougher treated base - dedicated to commercial activities, the residential storeys forming a middle part and a cornice or roof element on top. In London however - and throughout England - the middle-class idea of intimacy should be further and further extended to all layers of society by the emergence of the terraced house. A house almost as a space of isolation, as if it were escaping the metropolis augmenting with such rapid speed under Wren’s just completed dome; Now the growing capital of a freshly unified Kingdom of Great Britain, already the center of an Empire sheerly unsurpassed in dimension and diversity and soon the steaming engine of an all-invading industrialisation. Whereas the vertical private-public organisation on the continent seems to indulge in its urban density, the horizontal English concept could be read as an opposing rejection of the latter although it is certainly also influenced by the sheer geological conditions which did not allow for an extended upward growth. The private space here finds its entrance door on the street level, not elevated; Supply is organised from the backstreet, the mews, not through a court; And the public stage, separated from the private by fences and gates, is formed by parks and clubs as well as by public buildings, pubs and stores on separate commercial streets, and not along the domestic spaces.

Despite each house sharing two walls with its neighbours, in its organisation, the terraced house thus follows the logic of a home in the countryside.

And this allegorical relation between private life and countryside finds most emphasis in the establishment of private parks to accompany the emerging terraced houses. A Georgian drawing room 3 4

Lawson, Public and Private Spaces of the City, 81 Ibid, 83

seems fully completed only by its view out onto the garden. The garden here was neither meant to grow vegetables, nor merely as a public pleasure ground and it did not follow a strict French or Italian organisation. But along its circuit paths the varying views through loosely planted trees on intimately grouped shrubberies and wide open clearings evoked an informal image of a natural English landscape and with an occasional folly or tea house or apace with a curving lake or animated cascade, the garden provided the outdoor pendant to the terraced house -- a private, an intimate space within the city. No doubt, if Bedford Square was to be found in Paris, Rome or Vienna, shops, bakeries and cafés would occupy the ground level of the buildings and round coffee tables would spread over the square to the edge of the garden in which - the gates open - dogs and children would play on the grass while the elderly read their newspaper in the shade of the platanes. In the midst of London however the square stays empty, the garden gates are closed, the stoops are signposted ‘private property’ and thus - although its occupation mode has changed - the view onto the garden through Bedford Square’s Georgian windows to this day evokes that secluded, private, that somewhat lonesome sense of a country life.

With respect to the suburban, if not anti-urban character of this organisation, it is important to note that the architectural language of the terraced house got absorbed in classicism, namely with facade designs in compliance with Palladio’s schemes for grand palazzo facades5 and in this regard the buildings remained faithful to continental urban developments in the spirit of enlightenment; A rustication, a high pedestal with rougher features, wraps the ground floor while the extraordinary higher second storey, the piano nobile with the drawing room, and the lower third storey were arranged along a Giant Order, namely an order of columns on the facade that reached over two stories. Furthermore, a cornice replaced or visually covered the more traditional gable roof with spaces for smaller rooms.6 In the course of its development, the Giant Order was often given up and decorative elements abstracted - the rustication and cornice on Bedford Square for example were reduced solely to firm lines - yet within its proportions the terraced house strictly stayed aligned with Palladian palazzos and the further reduction of the already strict facades, like a secession from anything irrational, all the more radically underlines the overall austerity of the design. To stay on Bedford Square, the larger and more richly decorated central buildings stand out from the row of houses on each side of the square and by this accentuation of a center, each row seems to merge into one single building, evoking the overall appearance of a large mansion. In a way this visual suggestion of unity again Is reminiscent of the vertical merge of several households under one roof in Paris. However, while the early Parisian apartment building would be occupied by different classes along a hierarchy pronounced by its facade, the individual English terraces provided this spatial division of the social classes within themselves and by their location, not under the same roof.

The picture drawn thus provides a certain ambivalence towards the architectural establishment of a modern family space within the city; Its logic derives from a secluded house in the English countryside, yet its language follows the continental enlightened pattern of a palazzo for a particularly urban society and thus, essentially, the row was dressed as a block. As if it was to further emphasise this vacillation between country and city - somewhat the emojis of tradition and progress - the rise of the terraced house in England - that intimate shelter in opposition to the speed of its time - was ultimately propelled by a proto-industrialisation and its impact on construction planning such as the availability of standardised building materials, especially regarding the mass production of bricks by improved brick-making processes.7 On a closer look, a similar ambivalence - although in reversed roles - can be detected with respect to the elevation of the landscape garden in the 18th century. The logic here is in a way corresponding with enlightened continental ideas; It evolves, very much like painting as a form of fine arts, from a curiosity with a secular truth, which, in its turn towards sense and sciences, relates to pre-Christian concepts of reasoning. Along these lines, the circuit paths through an artificial landscape and along follies and tea houses that often were executed in classicist styles or even imitating temples and relics of the classic world embody the sense of an educational journey or a voyage of discovery like the 5 6 7

Muthesius, The English Terraced House,12 Ibid,12 Muthesius, The English Terraced House,28

Grand Tours through France, Italy and Greece which became most fashionable among the central and northern European noble and intellectual elites. The idea of gathering botanical species - and it is important to also note the occasional exotics, e.g. the palm trees in London’s gardens - yet in an informal, a ‘natural’ manner rather than a herbarium-style organisation arguably also depicts an attempt to capture the very essence of a natural order -- the garden as a celebration of a biological genius and thus very much in contrast to its Baroque predecessors which ultimately could be read as a cultural taming of anything deriving from nature. Regarding this surprising classic notion of the landscape garden, it seems only appropriate that Alexander Pope who, with his English translation of Homer’s Iliad from 1715, stands like no other for the intellectual revival of the classic world, was also a passionate gardener and in 1724 remarked that ‘[...] Gardening is more Antique and nearer God’s own work than Poetry.’8 The gardening language on the other hand escaped from any classic order and, most importantly, it rejected symmetry to fully liberate its unsettled branching of growth and decay. In lieu of pruning in shape, planting in pattern and aligning in axis, shrubs clustered, colours blended and paths curved their way past the expanding greenery as if they were laid out according to a previously existing landscape. The view here does not follow directions, it wanders about the lush composition of shrubs, trees, grass and evergreens and - here through dense branches, there through open glades, now in dark shades, then in bright tones - offers a varying range of perspectives that, within their vagueness and asymmetry, stimulate the viewer’s imagination of an idealised English landscape. It is so to speak ‘through the garden gate’, that the idea of the picturesque arrives in England. Indeed, the Georgian garden in this respect already presaged the Romantic movement of the following century.

And more than that: it’s intended true-to-nature appearance undoubtedly evokes the image of an untouched paradise and by this means employs a biblical imagery which seems to contradict any classic notion and thus points toward a Victorian, yes a revived Gothic motif. The 18th century garden as an epitome of the English landscape accordingly has to be set in direct connection to the 19th century understanding of the garden as an idealised vision of the English nation as a new Eden. ‘The Garden of God [...] shall it not be said of England?’9, these words of Ruskin, ever the gothic revivalist, thus draw a connection between the evolvement of the landscape garden and an ideological concept that occurred simultaneously -- namely the rise of an English national identity to which the garden - or better the ‘English’ landscape garden - today forms a major characteristic.

And while the use of the term ‘nationalism’ only occurs in the mid nineteenth century in England10, another - a conceptual - connection can certainly be drawn between the idea of a united people in a nation state and the idea of the modern family in a private space alluded to earlier.

If today one is asked to name some undisputed examples of Englishness, the landscape garden and the terraced house certainly will be among the first to mention -- assumingly just shortly after tea, football and the NHS and the royal family. They became protagonists of the national myth -- like any myth created by people to ‘[...] try to make sense of changes too large for contemporary understanding’.11 Following these lines of the historian Gerald Newman, such changes can be identified in the growing cosmopolitanism of the 18th century and the base of English nationalism commonly associated with the Victorian age - not unlike the appearance of the modern family - can thus be detected as a contrasting phenomena to the latter, already in Georgian times.12 The cosmopolitanism Newman refers to here has to be understood as ‘foreign’, mainly French manners and culture which find their way to the isles as aristocratic and elitist preferences. A commencing industrialisation and the growing geopolitical significance of London which drew multitudes to the city inevitably added to its diversity - or unfamiliarity - and, in the reverse, amplified the contrasts of urban and rural life. If the new or unfamiliar urban texture is considered ‘foreign’, the ‘native’ can be found in the known, the established, the traditional and thus refers to the rural world. In this regard, whether or not a response to an early nationalism, the Georgian terraced house such as the landscape garden in 8 9 10 11 12

Pope, quoted in Jacques, Georgian Gardens,26 Ruskin, quoted in Illingworth, Ruskin and Gardening ,232 Kumar, The Making of National Identity, 176 Newman, The Rise of English Nationalism,141 Kumar, The Making of National Identity,177

their discussed ambiguity blur the architectural boundaries of city and country by the combination of both urban continental and rural (English) ideals.

It is important to note however that the 18th century rural actualities were no less subjected to change; ‘There was universal improvements in the systems and techniques of farming as well as a large increase in the land under cultivation.’13 Furthermore, new and more flexible systems of crop rotation led to an increased production of animal feed and the resulting growth of livestock made more manure available which again led to increasing yields. Eventually as well by the achievement of more centralised forms of estate management14, the proto industrialisation in England had thus - earlier than in other countries - already reached the countryside and these dramatic modifications were also reflected in a range of architectural considerations.

There is first to mention the many designs of cottages and agricultural buildings for large estates which, regardless their program, had a decorative function and employed gothic or classical styles for the visual pleasure of the upper class. And there is secondly rural building designs for small farmers and agricultural workers in different scales that usually are less decoratively elaborated, yet often executed in historicizing manners trying to detect an originally English style. In a clearly nationalist attempt to turn away from the changes of the time, these proposals suggested to extract their fashions from the life of ordinary people which lead to the design of picturesque cottage buildings.

Gandy’s design however follows a different approach. By organising the eight cottages wall to wall he delivers a building according to the logic of the terraced house which finds further emphasis in the two main rooms layout and also, most importantly maybe, in its classic facade. His proposal can without doubt be considered a rural terrace and hence it seems all the more curious to consider the deviations Gandy establishes from the urban terrace alluded to earlier. The first and most obvious difference can be detected in the overall, undeniably radical circular outline of the complex. In contrast to the row flanking a street or square, the perfect circular plan absolutely refuses any notion of back and front and as such is notably reminiscent of a block organisation and, what is more, the pie segmentation accomplishes the perfection of this concept. A clear enlightened motif can be identified in this organisation which, not unlike Ledoux’s saltworks design for the French city of Chaux and further accentuated by the designation according to compass directions, points towards the idealised idea of a layout ‘[...] as pure as the path the sun follows’15. The determination of a courtyard seems to ultimately underline the continental character of Gandy’s design. It is here however only accessible through the individual cottage segments and it is furthermore divided according to the pie segmentation - if even only by a suggested line - and thus lacks any public function. Accordingly, albeit the block like organisation, the enlightened metaphoric of its outline and the - at first sight - almost communal notion of the circular inner yard, one has to conclude that Gandy’s design indeed establishes individual segments in correspondence with the private space concept that emerged along with the modern family. In this regard, a major exception is to be seen in the absence of corridors -- the second difference to the general typology of Georgian terraced houses.

It is crucial to bear in mind that the latter at first has been a bourgeois development whereas Gandy addresses the rural working class. In lieu of a second or third storey, that is without a staircase, a corridor seemingly became redundant in this proposal. The definite designation of the rooms, the separation of kitchen and bedroom as well as their order of accessibility at the least suggest a clear consideration of intimacy within the plan.

The one storey particularity also evokes a third main difference to the urban terraced house which lies in the design of its facade; Although in its striking austerity clearly corresponding to the 18th century English Palladian Movement according to which ‘[...] too much detailed decoration was felt to be distracting’16, the proposal overcomes the three-element structure by reducing the facade to the rustication and an almost undetectable cornice, suggested only by a subtle strip. Through the plain surface of its rendering, any decorative notion is ultimately denied, such that the simple bars 13 14 15 16

Robinson, Georgian Model Farms,12 Ibid, 13 Ledoux, quoted in Bibliothèque Nationale (France), Visionary Architects,112 Muthesius, The English Terraced House, 231

along the full height doors and the frameless windows to their sides become the only interruption of an otherwise brutally modest facade. The rectangular window format in this regard further emphasizes the overall horizontality of the flat complex and simultaneously would establish a most unusual, almost modern appearance if it wasn’t for the abstracted tuscan columns in front that carry the porches with their flat pediments and introduce a certain elegance to the proposal. Once more, Gandy employs a classic language which - considering also the symmetrical alignment of the chimneys with door and porch - is reminiscent of the terraced house. By virtue of its circular outline however, the building here transfers its articulated single center away from the facade to its literal midpoint in plan and thus is evocative more of a temple than of a mansion. Nonetheless, by its homogeneity, by that very circular shape and lastly through the continuous roof, the proposal suggests a strong visual unity. The pitched roof, not replaced nor hidden by the careful cornice draws furthermore a clear connection to traditional rural English buildings, namely to the flat gable roofs of barns and cottages that would commonly be associated with the English countryside.

Clearly, Gandy delivers a design that embodies much of the Georgian terrace ambiguity and accordingly, while its organisation establishes a clear division of individual cottages, the overall foremost classical language - which in the rural context depicts a particularly foreign influence - forms a visually unifying element. Within the circular shape lies moreover a resistant character and this almost protective notion is all the more emphasised by the window wall relation of the exterior in contrast to the proportionally higher window area towards the courtyard. As if it was to form a bastion toward the rawness of the surrounding landscape, the pure geometry of the proposal suggests a defensiveness which through the protruded porches expands towards a certain convexity. In accordance with this sense of expansion, Gandy describes how ‘[...] each cottage might have a piece of ground, concentric with the whole group of cottages [...] at the end of which may be a hovel, for the shelter of a cow.’17 In fact, one might have to understand this outward oriented ‘piece of ground’ and the surrounding nature as the equivalent to the enclosed landscape garden within the Georgian square. Whereas the idealised realisation of the garden as an allegory of the native landscape seems to envision an escape from the cosmopolitan city, the pure geometry and ‘unnatural’ austerity of Gandy’s design, that temple-like otherness here apparently offers an idealised vision of human culture as an escape from the rural reality. Gandy thus proposes a complex that in a way could be described as an inverted terraced house which in lieu of the urban grid of streets establishes its own cultural base point - that is literally through its center - and eventually both from the Bedford Square drawing rooms as well as from the parlours of the Cottages of the Winds, the views wander over the English landscape.

17

Gandy, Designs for Cottages and Cottage Farms ,24

A landscape indeed, that Gandy takes into consideration when he remarks that ‘these cottages are supposed to be situated near a wood [...]’18 and furthermore by the rather impressive, slightly ghosted trees in the background as well as the in watery brush strokes suggested fields in the foreground of his elevation. The fact alone, that, in contrast to the isolated appearance of Palladian etchings, the elevation here is delivered with some hints on its proposed context is noteworthy. Additionally the particular style of the drawing certainly deserves some further consideration as it employs an aquatint technique which, albeit still black and white, by its soft and less contrasted shadings is reminiscent of an image painted in watercolour. That is the same medium that Ruskin later considered ‘[...] best suited to the aesthetic exercise of a young gentleman [...]’19 and that latest with the paintings of Turner - of the English landscape - reached a much quoted status of Englishness. It is hence even within the style of drawing that the proposal constitutes a bridge between classic continental styles and manners commonly attributed to English culture and it is again the depiction of greenery that, much like the landscape garden, seems to anticipate the romantic ideas of a Victorian era yet to arrive.

By turning the page Gandy seems to be drawing ever closer towards this era as he introduces a village of the winds: ‘so that eight of the groups formed into a circle, compose sixty-four cottages for labourers and their families, whose common centre might be a chapel, or parish church.’20 The family emphasis was detectable already from the singular complex and the overall architectural language is still classicist, the view from its parlours however changes with this multiplication; The church and the others now distract the view of the landscape. That is to say a religious building becomes now the very center of a formerly secular proposal and the copy-paste arrangement of the cottage complexes around it suddenly evokes the image of a Victorian miners settlement rather than that of agricultural cottages. An impression which is most dramatically emphasised by the designation of its occupants as ‘labourers’. On the other hand, by Gandy’s loyality to the again perfect circular arrangement of the eight, a center is accentuated which for the first time embodies a truly communal character and thus carries a humanist, almost egalitarian notion that seems in complete opposition to the rise of Victorian capitalism. Again, that same striking ambivalence that would not hesitate to draw classic orders in watercolours.

In contrast to the work of many of his contemporaries, Gandy’s proposal is neither designed for aristocratic entertainment nor in historicizing nationalism. It certainly has to be put in context with an architectural urbanisation that delivered idealised rural buildings to welcome the industrialisation in the countryside, yet his design in many ways remains faithful to the ambiguity of the Georgian terraced house that so successfully embodies the diverse winds of a certain English peculiarity.

18 19 20

Gandy, Designs for Cottages and Cottage Farms ,24 Sumner, Ruskin and the English Watercolour, 6 Gandy, Designs for Cottages and Cottage Farms ,25

BIBLIOGRAPHY: Bibliothèque Nationale (France). Cabinet des estampes. Visionary architects. Boullée, Ledoux, Lequeu.

Houston: University of St. Thomas, 1968.

Gandy, Joseph. Designs for cottages, cottage farms and other rural buildings; including entrance gates and lodges.

London : printed for John Harding, 1805.

Jacques, David. Georgian Gardens : the reign of nature. London : Batsford, 1983.

John Illingworth, Ruskin and Gardening. In: Garden History, Vol. 22, No. 2, The Picturesque (Winter, 1994), pp. 218-233 Published by: The Garden History Society.

Kumar, Krishan. The Making of English National Identity. In: Contemporary sociology. VOL 33; NUMB 6, ; 2004, 685-686.

Lawson, L. Madanipour: Public and Private Spaces of the City. In: Journal of the American Planning Association. VOL 70; PART 2, ; 2004, 234-235 Muthesius, Stefan. The English Terraced House. New Haven ; London : Yale University Press, 1982.

Newman, Gerald. The rise of English nationalism : a cultural history, 1740-1830. New York : St.Martin’s, 1997.

Robinson, John Martin. Georgian model farms : a study of decorative and model farm buildings in the age of improvement, 1700-1846. Oxford : Clarendon, 1983.

Sumner, Ann. Ruskin and the English watercolour : from Turner to the Pre-Raphaelites. Whitworth Art Gallery, 1989.

IMAGES: Gandy, Joseph. Designs for cottages, cottage farms and other rural buildings; including entrance gates and lodges.

London : printed for John Harding, 1805.