The notion of the ideal suburb has preoccupied me for some time. In such a place one can juxtapose certain of one's favourite designs. In an Arcadia, however, there is more. The feyness, the escapism, the optimism, the Heroism, the nostalgia, of Arcadia are all part of its charm.
In this design, the assumption is made of a standard town block. The lower street is pedestrianised. The upper street is vehicular.
Against the lower street is a long hedge.
On close inspection, this hedge is found to contain a series of small studio cottages.
Rising up from the hedge are some strange hill-like apartment blocks. They are small apartment blocks, and contain their own arcaded stairways. A complex, but highly urbane series of balconies give onto the main lane.
This winding lane runs from the street into the midst of the Arcadia. it penetrates the arbour (a long trellis-like growth), that screens the inner part of Arcadia.
Interspersed with the apartment blocks are some large houses. These are based on Willow tree formations, containing a large, mysterious space. Some more 'Willow' houses exist further back as well.
The inner part of Arcadia is a garden, and this oscillates from extreme formality: where sometimes there is hardly any dividing line between an architecture of 'building' and of 'flower bed' or 'hedge'; and in other parts an informality where housing and planting are languishing amongst a quasi-natural landscape.
Alongside the upper street there are orchards and a few small outcrops of dwelling. this part is in the tradition of the smallholding, the backyard and the shed.
The local inhabitants tend to lead fairly private lives. All the alternative offerings contain inner spaces that are large enough for long-term immersion. for such is the nature of Arcadia (as opposed, let us say, to 'peoples' housing or Span) that it
must offer variety, privacy, magic, an avoidance of piety and 'good-Chapness'.
Yes, this is the clue: arcadia for me is about a lifestyle. It is very Victorian in intention. My myth of the Victorians is that they had immense verve and imagination. Their architecture was eclectic and let it all hang out. Their spirit would have easily allowed of rooms without wall, door or window (which we are now technically able to build), they were probably themselves into notions of the combination of the natural and the artificial, the architectural and the vegetable, the permanent and the disintegrative (all of which are my favourite current preoccupations).
In this project, I am developing certain earlier ideas: the apartment block is a re-run of the house for the Via Appia that I designed with Christine Hawley. The Willow Tree house was developed whilst at the Rhode Island School of Design (perhaps thinking over-romantically of England), and the Orchard - the miniature megastructure.
In amongst the gardens there are some tall glass pylons. These are hints of (perhaps) the next stage in the examination of Arcadia. A gentle and quiet garden, a series of buildings that are - I hope - not aggressive but have character.....and then.....these transparent, tinted obelisks. They are of course a part of another meta-architecture that is not explicit: it will contain spaces that can be filled by sheds, tents or bushes that are temporary dwellings. But they might also form a reiterative structure that would be randomly grown into more formal buildings. But their feyness, their transparency, is a primitive attempt to suggest the existence of a minimal (but formal) icon in amongst the hairy, random rockeries and flowerbeds.
