Choose Your Own Adventure

My classmates and I spent the past weekend in Newcastle, a city 3 hours North of London. Known for its beer, wild "stag and hen" parties (i.e. bachelor/bachelorette parties), friendly "geordies" (i.e. Newcastle "lifers"), Baltic Contemporary Art Museum, Byker Hill housing project, and rotating Millennium Bridge, Newcastle proved to be a lively cultural playground. While our leader Jeremy (see Stonehenge pictures for a visual) provided us with our weekly injection of Sir Foster architecture (i.e. the Sage Center-- a mixture of blob, curtain wall, and compartmentalized volumes), Newcastle also served as the departure point for a day trip to Cragside, my new "favorite place."

While London's urban environment has thus far been a healthy dose of woven infrastructure and contemporary add-ons, Cragside's historic home and gardens was a literal breath of fresh air. Built in the 1860's by the inventor Lord Armstrong, Cragside is a historic home rooted in a vision of modernity. Cragside was not simply another "retreat," but rather a place for experimetation and technological innovation. As the first home to use hydroelectric power, it also housed a scientific laboratory and astronomical observation tower. Furthermore, Cragside's grounds range from the "traditional garden" to a human-scale labyrinth formed by rhododendron bushes and a structurally-savvy iron bridge.

After spending the day admiring the gardens, hiking miles of choreographed trails, and touring the interior of the estate, I was struck by Lord Armstrong's ability to fabricate a "comprehensive" world within the confines of a single property. While the antiquated American dream of "creating one's own world" via a fence, a yard, and a single-family home still exists (I can confirm this based on the proliferation of lawn-ornaments that validate the still popular need to "customize" personal property), few have a chance to manifest their dreams and desires through elaborate landscape manipulation and architectural manifestation.



Lord Armstrong's use of architecture and landscape (not to mention landscape architecture) is most notable for its range of "available" experiences. For the nature lover, there are the lakes, labyrinths, and Pinetum. For the botanist, greenhouses growing seasonal fruits and flowers operate year round. For the inventor, the water wheel and powerhouse remain progressive symbols of electricity generation. For the socialite, the formal drawing rooms, Turkish baths, and art galleries provide spaces for entertainment and leisure.



And for the architecture student, the experiential collapse of multiple worlds within the course of a single day fuels a hopefully shared belief;

that through the creation of different environments (both natural and synthetic) he/she can have a positive impact on the generation of new ideas and attitudes regarding the notion of "lifestyle" and what I might dare to call "progressive" living.