Wednesday, March 17, 2010

Follies of Sensation

Texas A&M Univeristy. Spring 2010 Second Year. Critic: Gabriel Esquivel

a folly is a building constructed primarily for decoration. In the original use of the word, these buildings had no other use, but from the 19-20th centuries the term was also applied to highly decorative buildings which had secondary practical functions such as housing, sheltering or business use. In the 18th century English gardens and French landscape gardening often featured Roman temples, which symbolized classical virtues or ideals. Other 18th century garden follies represented Chinese temples, Egyptian pyramids, ruined abbeys, or Tatar tents, to represent different continents or historical eras. Sometimes they represented rustic villages, mills and cottages, to symbolize rural virtues. "Folly" is used in the sense of fun or light-heartedness, not in the sense of something ill-advised.

The idea behind this project is to redefine what the concept of garden is today with our different needs and our desire for seduction and spectacle. The garden will be a garden on sensations.

They follies have intricate relationships with the ground and will use different kinds of natural and artificial elements to produce affects and sensations.