fields

Talk at Bauhaus

Well sort of.

Professor Andrea Haase at HS Anhalt, Architecture School invited me to give two lectures. The department are based at the Gropius site. University campus meets tourist attraction. The buildings are in good shape and remain fascinating artefacts.

Lectures constructed a narrative between the Less Remote paper, Leonardo April issue, and the City in Film paper on Ghosts and memory.

Talks went well, but something popped up which was fascinating in the context of Landscape Architecture. The Dessau–Wörlitz Garden Realm, also known as the English Grounds of Wörlitz, is a very large English parks created in the late 18th century. Strongly influenced by the ideals of The Enlightenment, the owners Duke Leopold III of Anhalt-Dessau and his friend architect Friedrich Wilhelm von Erdmannsdorff aimed to overcome the formal garden concept of the Baroque era in favour of a naturalistic landscape.

In the middle of one of the lakes the guys constructed an island atop which was a model of Mount Vesuvius. The duke would stage fireworks that seemed to issue from an erupting volcano to entertain his guests. At the foot of the mountain on the island was a building intended to suggest William Hamilton‘s home at Pompeii, where he did his famous archaeological work.

Postcards describe the site, which was reenacted when the site gained World Heritage status 10 years ago.

As a landscape theatre is seems extraordinary that so much work would be done to demonstrate a control over natural forces.

Fantastic work.