GOTHIC D.I.Y & FORGETTING TO DIE

You can build it. We can help. Lets build something together.So the slogans go.  The eighteenth-century quest for the shudders went well beyond the craving for ”horrid” novels and took the form of horrid architecture that seemed to be permeated with the heavy odor of death.  The Gothic revival style was, of course, a serious approach to building, but close on its heels followed a flock of bogus follies in stone, that sometimes seemed to appear like mausoleums or the large pre-historic tombs found in Brittany for giants.

Every fashionable gentleman wanted one for his estate: A grotto encrusted with shells, a made-to-measure ruin, a haunted castle, a keep. A hermit’s abode, with hermit, behind the manor house could be as impressive a selling point as a flagstone patio is today. Few men had the resources and tastes of a Horace Walpole, who bought the villa called Strawberry Hill and spent years and a fortune transforming it to suit his Gothic taste.

At the other extreme was the work of  Japanese architect Shusaku Arakawa who built on the premise that it was immoral for people to have to die. He designed houses that were supposed to help stop people from aging. The gothic destiny of death was seen as a reversible destiny. For Arakawa the ideal form of house was one that kept its inhabitant in a ”perpetual tentative relationship with their surrounding.” Meaning, the owner had to be challenged by oddity and a perversity equal to the Goths.

…Almost no one was lucky enough to have a real medieval ruin on the family property, so a number of entrepreneurs set about building their own. Some illustrated books of instruction for the Gothicizer even found their way into print. Batty Langley’s ”Gothic Architecture Improved by Rules”  was one ( 1747 ); a reissue of ”Ancient Architecture Restored” ” I therefore give this public notice that it will take to erect all sorts of buildings in the Saxon mode… no greater experience than a plain building…”

”Of this, and others, Horace Walpole later wrote: “All that his books achieved, has been to teach carpenters to massacre that venerable species, and to give occasion to those who know nothing of the matter, and who mistake his clumsy efforts for real imitations, to censure the productions of our ancestors, whose bold and beautiful fabrics Sir Christopher Wren viewed and reviewed with astonishment, and never mentioned without esteem.”

''New York-based Japanese artist Shusaku Arakawa designed this small apartment block in 2005 in the Tokyo suburb of Mitaka in conjunction with his poet partner, Madeline Gins. According to the SushiLog: ‘Painted in eye-catching blue, pink, red, yellow and other bright colors, the building resembles the indoor playgrounds that attract toddlers at fast-food restaurants. Inside, each apartment features a dining room with a grainy, surfaced floor that slopes erratically, a sunken kitchen and a study with a concave floor. Electric switches are located in unexpected places on the walls so you have to feel around for the right one. A glass door to the veranda is so small you have to bend to crawl out’.''

…Arakawa and partner Madeline Gins most extreme design was the ”Bioscleave House” on Long Island. It boasts three dozen shades of paint and sloping floors in the guise of cartoon like sand dunes; level changes aimed at conveying a feeling of being in two places at once as well as no doors, odd shaped rooms and other surrealist tricks. These devices were intended to stimulate the occupant in ways conventional homes do not. States of comfort, according to Arakawa create anxiety, because although cosseting, it can only ever be finite; thus shortening rather than prolonging life.

Probably educated beyond his natural talents, but an engaging self publicist, Batty Langley promoted himself energetically throughout his life. He remains something of an enigma although the term “Batty Langley Gothic” often used to day has ensured a continuing reputation.”

For the adventurous, two rental units are now available for 220,000 and 250,000 yen ($2,000/$2,400) per month, which is a bit pricey for Tokyo, but not outrageous. Short-term stays can also be arranged.

”Pretentious as he was, Walpole did not claim to have revived the medieval single-handed. He wrote to Mann in Italy for “any fragments of old painted glass, arms or anything”, reassuring him of “the liberty of taste into which we are all struck”. With papier-mâché friezes, Gothic-themed wallpaper, fireplaces copied from medieval tombs, a Holbein chamber evoking the court of Henry VIII, Dutch blue and white tiles on the floor, and modern oil paintings, china and carpets throughout, Strawberry Hill was hardly a faithful recreation of a medieval manor. Walpole wanted theatrical effect, atmosphere and “gloomth”, not a time capsule. “Visions you know have always been my pasture . . . Old castles, old pictures, old histories and the babble of old people make one live back into centuries that cannot disappoint one.”

Ho

Folly Tower stands 140 foot tall and was built by a Humphrey Sturt early in the 1700`s.

The Gothic era he plundered seemed to encompass all the centuries before Inigo Jones (who transplanted the principles of Italian renaissance architecture under the patronage of Charles I). Any period from the dark ages to the Jacobean was ripe for plagiarism.” ( Amanda Vickery )

Another was Charles Over’s book on the Gothic, Chinese, and Modern Taste, which provided plans for DIY projects that were garish and absurd, yet had a certain charm about them; status symbols for the rising mercantile class and outlet for the new wealth the colonies were providing. The projects included garden cascades, grotto’s, rustic covered seats and hermit’s cells and whatever fabulations that could find a customer. On the earliest sham grotto, built for Alexander Pope at Twickenham:

''Fantastic Landmark Trust property you can stay in. James Bond - The World is Not Enough - starts with this Temple as its back drop for a funeral scene. It has an amazing domed ceiling inside with a gallery. Wonderful views across Stowe Park with its landscape of buildings, statues and bridges.''

”The tunnel acquired decoration, so forming an extension to the grotto itself. Dr Johnson, wrote a mocking but inaccurate description: “A grotto is not often the wish or pleasure of an Englishman, who has more frequent need to solicit rather than exclude the sun, but Pope’s excavation was requisite as an entrance to his garden, and, as some men try to be proud of their defects, he extracted an ornament from an inconvenience, and vanity produced a grotto where necessity enforced a passage”.

Desmond Williams: ''I recently read a NYTimes article about a tiny extension house on Long Island with a grand mission: to lengthen the life of humans through jarring aesthetics that engage the body, and in turn facilitate the stimulation of the immune system. The Bioscleave House is based on a novel concept; one that takes an inverted look at sustainable living by focusing first on the immediate environment which we inhabit, and thereby sharpening our attitude toward the world at large.''

As the gothics seemed to be slow-dancing wit the grim reapers, Arakawa and Gins were developing their ”reversible destiny” theory. They completed a series of lofts in Tokyo that boast colorful rooms  in the form of cylinders, cubes and spheres and are reputed to be difficult to live and sleep in. These lofts are dedicated to the memory of Helen Keller. Keller, deaf and blind, was role model for Arakawa because by relearning how to communicate, she somehow proved that reversible destiny was possible. Arakawa and Gins believed that the ideal resident of their homes should follow the same principle; be blank slates  so that their experience of architecture was continually novel. In this way, they would forget that they had to die.