Advance Information Sheet
Architectural Extravaganzas
Follies of Eastern Europe & Russia
Photographs by NIC BARLOW
Introduction by ADAM ZAMOYSKI
Text by CAROLINE HOLMES
Follies – extravagant or fanciful buildings serving artistic expression more than practicality – thrived in the designed landscapes created for the grand houses of Western Europe. With the migration eastward of ideas and philosophical concepts, follies and jardins anglais extended into Eastern Europe and in doing so stimulated an appetite there for the whimsical and the eccentric in related architectures.
The extensive wealth and power of the grandees of the 17th century Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth made for the creation of traditional follies in ‘romantic landscapes’ such as Arkadia (near Warsaw) and Sofyivka (currently in the Ukraine) created with passion and an eye for fashion. The enthusiasm for Chinoiserie, seen elsewhere in Western Europe, is seen in full exuberance in the imperial jardin anglais parklands created for Catherine the Great at Tsarskoye Selo (near St. Petersburg) with the Chinese village, the Creaking Pagoda, and a bridge modelled on the Palladian bridge at Stowe. The follies at Lednice (Bohemia) include a sham ruin of a medieval castle and a sixty-metre minaret with Arabic inscriptions.
In time, the aesthetic sensibility that created the temple, sham ruin or grotto of a landscaped garden came to influence the more functional architecture of palaces, weekend and holiday retreats, of which Eastern Europe has an abundance. Examples can be found in the homes of the Russian aristocracy and plutocracy on the Crimean Riviera, the Bory and Taródi castles in Hungary, or in the largely forgotten work of Josef Plecnik, the Slovene designer and architect inspired by the Vienna Secession.
The rise of totalitarianism in Eastern Europe saw the advent of architectural whimsy and caprice in the service of raw political power. The Moscow Metro with its palatial chandeliered underground spaces, or the Palace of Culture and Science in Warsaw, Stalin’s gift to the subjugated Poles, which post-war Poland “was to polite to refuse” – serve as examples of Socialist-realist follies. As late as the 1980s, political indulgence continued with Ceausescu’s Palace of the Parliament, in Bucharest, which is still one of the largest and most costly administrative buildings in the world.
The folly tradition continues. Amidst the copybook edifices of mundane modern architecture, real gems of contemporary fantasy have been born. Frank Gehry’s dancing building – the “Ginger and Fred” house in Prague – the Gangster’s House in Arkhangelsk (Russia), or the Crooked House in Sopot (Poland) are but a few of the gloriously individualistic follies that can be found in Eastern Europe today.