Three Doors to Other Worlds

Author(s): Andrew Crompton

Source: Journal of Architectural Education (1984-), Vol. 62, No. 2, Immateriality in
Architecture (Nov., 2008), pp. 24-29
Published by: Taylor & Francis, Ltd. on behalf of the Association of Collegiate Schools of
Architecture, Inc.
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ANDREW CROMPTON Three Doors to Other Worlds
University of Manchester

Architecture that is hard to describe by being immaterial, irrelevant, and unintended may engage
us in a narrative rather than a visual sense. Three examples of anonymous architecture are
presented where stories regarding interfaces between existence and nonexistence emerge. They
are all places where people can vanish and taken together tell stories of death, hell, and heaven.
In these unexpected places, the deeper issues of life may be obliquely and ironically experienced.

Of darkness visible so much be lent sublime, spiritual, or comic, and the better the uncanny connections between them and obstacles
As half to show, half veil the deep intent. object is at avoiding description, the richer they are. in his work that were thereby overcome. The mask
-Alexander Pope1 Hard-to-describe objects are hard to find reappeared in the face of one of Ciacometti's
because there seem to be no rules for recognizing sculptures, and the spoon was found to contain
them. They are discovered rather than invented. If a concealed image that was artfully photographed
Introduction a way of making them were to be found, we would by Man Ray. Breton wrote, "The finding of on
Is it possible to find architectural objects that are so have an efficient cause for them, one of the very object serves here exactly the some purpose as the
difficult to describe that they resist being repre- things we wish to avoid. To some degree, they seem dream."* One feels a little envious that such
sented by photograph or measured drawing? To be outside our control. They are not available to us as magical goods cannot be found in secondhand
more exact about what we mean by description, let objects to be used; instead, our relationship to shops today, unless perhaps they are still there but
us restrict ourselves to Aristotle's four types of them is more personal. The idea of hard-to-describe we lack his gift for seeing them. This is certainly
cause- material, formal, efficient, and final- and everyday objects taking part in a dialogue can be possible for there seems to be no method for
look for things for which those causes are an found in the work of André Breton. It will be useful finding objects like them. Indeed, Breton was at
inadequate explanation. If there is obvjously more to review his experience with indefinable objects pains to describe how they nearly did not buy the
to an object than the stuff from which it is made, it before looking for architectural equivalents. objects, which were after all only bric-a-brac, and
will be immaterial in the primary sense of that word. that they walked away from the stall before having
It will be immaterial in the secondary sense of that second thoughts and to that extent the purchase
word, meaning irrelevant, if it lacks a formal or Indefinable Objects
a final cause through being purposeless or useless. In 1934, André Breton and his friend Alberto Cia- 1 . André Breton's mask. (Photograph by Man Ray.)

It will avoid having an efficient cause if it has an cometti selected objects at the Saint-Ouen Flea
unknown origin or if it is the unintended result of an Market in Paris because they were "drawing us as
accidental or unconscious process. something we had never seen."2 He reproduced
Examples of objects that evade description in photographs of the mask (Figure 1) and the
this way follow. How can we interact with such peculiar spoon they bought in his book L'Amour
negative objects? If we do not dismiss them as fou (Mad Love). These objets trouvés were hard to
irrelevant and unimportant, then I suggest that we describe because they resembled a lot of other
will interact with them by reading stories into them, objects simultaneously so that no single category
providing by default a teleological explanation seemed sufficient to cover them. Breton's first

when other descriptions fail. In other words, if the impression of the mask was that of "being in the
object avoids a material, formal, efficient or final presence of a highly evolved descendant of the
cause, we will project a meaning on to it from within helmet, letting itself be drawn into a flirtation with
ourselves. The themes that emerge are those of lyric the velvet mask."3 Speculating unsuccessfully on
poetry, namely love and death. The results may be what they might actually be, Breton uncovered

Journal of Architectural Education, Three Doors to Other Worlds 24

pp. 24-29 © 2008 ACSA

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2. Thomas Sharp's Exeter City Plan. (From Exeter Phoenix: A Plan for
Rebuilding, 1946, p. 100.)

was unintended. It took several days for their hid-

den aspects to emerge.5
Breton's encounter may be described as
sublime, something that is experienced when
there is a difference between what is seen and
what is felt. Breton sought out such experiences.
Some of his most characteristic essays describe
the ways in which chance events link inner human
desire with the outward world. Although sublimity
is most often experienced in powerful and over-
whelming circumstances there are other ways of
evoking it, as we see here. In literature, there
seem to be no rhetorical figures for it; indeed, it
has been said that sublimity is most effective consequence, townscape is hard to draw, and hard to describe and through concealing some-
when whatever figure happens to be used is not attempts to go beyond plan drawings can lead to thing. They are not buildings as such but objects
explicit.6 In short, there is no recipe for these peculiar results. Thomas Sharpe's drawings of his in landscapes that avoid description by being
effects, and if you think you have one, it may proposals for Exeter (Figure 2) avoid indicating immaterial, irrelevant, and unintentional. As with
not stand up to scrutiny. Edmund Burke located the style of particular buildings.10 The result is Breton's objects and as with townscape, we
it in obscurity and for that reason thought that almost uncanny, a city of strange white buildings respond to them personally if we, literally and
a painting that clearly represented its subject can that are like a canvas onto which an architect is figuratively, take time to look around them and
only ever be beautiful and never sublime.7 Some going to paint. The essence of townscape is dif- engage with the stones they tell. All of them have
of Burke's best examples of sublimity are from ficult to represent in individual drawings because dramatic potential and would make good film sets.
Milton, for whom words were the exemplary sub- time and space are needed to involve the viewer.
lime medium precisely because they do not pro- Landscape can be immaterial in much the same The Black Arrow
vide clear images. In poetry, the reader contributes way. Caroline Constant describes how at Cunnar Until recently, a black triangle could be seen at the
to the picture; in the same way, Breton contrib- Asplund and Sigurd Lewerentz's Woodland entrance to Asbestos House, an office building in
uted to what the objects were when he involved Cemetery the landscape was designed to resist a downtown Manchester, England.13 Between 1959,
them in his work. definitive analysis in historic terms by suppressing when it was built, and its demolition forty years
overt symbolism in support of the ineffable and later, few who stepped over it would have given it
Narrative Architecture the imagined.11 A lack of clarity allows us to pro- a second look. Its photograph (Figure 4) draws
Evidence that being hard to describe and having ject our own meanings onto the scene. A similar attention to something that, when pointed out,
narrative quality go together is found in town- obscurity improves the photograph in Figure 3, many people find slightly odd. It seems that the
scape and landscape. Thomas Sharp, who coined taken through a spy hole in the locked doors of builder constructed an arrow drawn on the plan that
the expression, described townscape as something Lewerentz's Resurrection Chapel. It is a poignant pointed to the entrance. The result was a sort of
seen by the kinetic eye and illustrated it with image because we can picture ourselves peeping into cultural fossil, a representation inlaid in terrazzo of
sequences of photographs in preference to single the light-filled chamber where the living and the a hugely enlarged piece of Letraset.™ Since it was
images.8 Cordon Cullen represented it with pho- dead part company. The photograph is accidental copied from an eighth-inch-to-one-foot scale
tographs and drawings presented like a comic strip and incomplete but involves us imaginatively. drawing, it was built ninety-six times larger than its
or a storyboard in which we can see movement and Because it both hides and reveals its subject, it is prototype, resulting in something like a spontane-
drama in close-up and long shot.9 Because we more powerful than the usual photograph in which ous Claes Oldenburg oversized sculpture. Precisely
perceive townscape in a narrative rather than the chapel is seen through open doors.12 how this happened is unknown. Perhaps the work
visual sense, a novel can be set in a town, although Three examples of architecture follow that was so absorbing that the contractor got carried
it would be odd to set one in a building. In engage the viewer in a similar way through being away. It could even have been malicious; one can

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 ings so that it does not stand out as an object in its a not-quite-human scale match John Ruskin's cri-
own right. In this case, the black arrow appropri- teria (outlined in The Seven Lamps of Architecture)
ated the modernist language of the building by for expressing power.17 Notwithstanding the obvi-
being abstract and geometrically simple. In fact, it ous beauty of the design, a description of the
was so well camouflaged that it vanished into the project published in 1939 portrayed the works in
background and was mistaken for a decorative entirely pragmatic terms as efficient, economical,
motif, allowing it, like a parasite, to switch hosts and easy to build, aims that were unlikely to have
by incarnating itself in stone. Could there have changed as work on this important industrial pro-
been a third stage in its life cycle through the ject continued during the war.18 Indeed, its sub-
subliminal influence it had on visitors? Anything limity seems to have been enhanced by the ruthless
written in stone has a kind of atavistic authority, economy with which it was executed. For example,
and had it appeared in a novel or a film, its as will be explained shortly, its stepped form
meaning would have been obvious. As long as improves it as an object that we can interact with
a visitor knew the story of the black arrow, then imaginatively. Stone bellmouths like these would
they were its master, but if they were unaware of normally have been dressed smooth, but here, the
it, then the black thing had a chance to speak. stone courses were left in steps to save time and
Suppose they intuited that it was an arrow and money. This change was sufficiently unusual to
then dismissed the idea as silly, they were still left warrant testing by Professor Gibson at Manchester
with the question: "why did that thought occur to University whose scale models proved that the
me just now?" A black arrow resembling a pyramid stone funnels were more than equal to their task of
that manifested itself for a moment before van- swallowing a river.19
ishing could represent a premonition of death. The What is down that hole is a deep mystery. Not
3. Lewerentz's Resurrection Chapel. (Photograph by Sally Stone, 2006.) fact that it pointed to the door of an Armed Forces even Google Earth can help you since its depths are
Careers Information Office will only have served in shadow when photographed from above. To see
easily imagine the builder getting revenge after some visitors as a macabre confirmation of what it for yourself means going down the steps as far as
being told by the architect to just build it like the seemed to say. you dare and then leaning out to take a look.
damned drawings. (In those days, relations Before attempting a descent, you might think it
between builder and architect were often confron- The Black Hole prudent to walk around the hole looking for the
tational.) It is unlikely that it appeared as an item in The next example is so rich in multiple meanings easiest way down. The search will reveal that the
the contract. Nobody designed it, nobody paid for and connections to literature and myth that it is workmanship is superb and that there is no weak-
it, and the person who built it was probably easy to overlook its obvious purpose and see ness to exploit, nowhere to tie a rope and not so
unaware that they had done so. It lacks a clear instead an object of sinister artistry. The Lady- much as a pebble to throw down the hole unless
material, formal, efficient, or final cause. bower reservoir, located in Derbyshire, England, you brought it with you in the boat. The steps of
The location of the entrance is not always and built between 1935 and 1944, lies behind an this circular waterfall are all eighteen inches high.
obvious in plans of modern buildings, and archi- earth dam designed by engineers C.P. Hill and This is an awkward height to descend, and most
tects sometimes indicate it with an arrow. How Sons of Manchester. No architect was involved in people, one imagines, would soon turn their back
should such a symbol be drawn? Typographers use its creation. The dam is protected by a pair of on the hole and face the stone like a climber. How

the expression "the invisibility of type," reflecting overflows whose stone bellmouths are eighty feet far would you be willing to go before the steps
the fact that when we read, we see words and not in diameter (Figure 5). These colossal orifices illus- became too small to continue? With proper boots,
letters.15 Typefaces are designed to vanish; by trate almost every one of the qualities Edmund it is possible to stand on a sharp edge as narrow as
sharing features with each other, letters are Burke lists as necessary for sublimity such as terror, a quarter of an inch wide; in such a position, you
camouflaged within the text. In a similar fashion, great dimension, unity, and the artificial infinite.16 will risk your life twisting your cheek away from the
a symbol does well to blend in with its surround- The elemental cylindrical shape and stonework at stone to look downward because that movement

Three Doors to Other Worlds 26

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 a graceful contrast to the steps so that the whole nothing bad would happen, and in a Twenty
piece is like an architrave framing the abyss, Questions quiz, you would have to waste one of
a sideways portrait of darkness visible. (3) As your questions finding out if it was the left or right
a dome is a rotated arch, this is a staircase in overflow. And so we could go on. This bellmouth
rotation, a Devil's Staircase.23 (4) Eighteen inches and its hole is a fountain of invention and stories.
may be too large for a stair riser but is comfortable Yet for all its power, it is very nearly ridiculous;
for sitting, creating a sort of amphitheater of the a section drawn through it looks like a plumbing
void, a satanic theater in the round (although one fixture.28 Photographs are more impressive, espe-
would not want a front row seat). (5) It is between cially the one by Peter Byrne shown here in which
the "Devil and the Deep Blue Sea."24 (6) It is a a boat and tiny figures give it scale. Looking at that
hole down which a plumb line cannot be dropped: photograph, I think the man walking on the top will
a bottomless pit. (7) It is a stone whirlpool. (8) It is need a bigger stick than that if he is to unblock it on
an Island of the Dead. (9) Here is the source of his own. You can laugh at that photograph, but the
4. The entrance to Asbestos House photographed in 1994. (Photo by
author.) one of the rivers of hell. (1 0) Its diminishing circles laughter would die on your lips if you could turn
remind us of Dante's model of hell. (11) This is from the image to look at the original. To that
will shift your center of gravity from a position what Columbus' crew feared: the edge. (12) The extent, it escapes representation, and in the dif-
above your feet causing you to pivot away from the top is large enough to ride around on a bicycle but ference between what is seen and felt, we feel the
wall with only friction at your fingertips to hold you is useless for any healthy human activity. You could touch of the sublime. What it speaks of, the dark
in place. Sooner or later, either youf nerves or your play games of dare, but little else. A more dan- matter around which all these ideas orbit, seems
grip will fail while diminishing steps accumulate gerous place to play cricket could not be imag- plain enough. No arrow is needed here.
below preventing a vertical view. In short, as if you ined; no game of Frisbee would last long. (13) It is
were performing a ritual, this structure will first a negative reversed object: a cylinder of air going Upstairs and Downstairs
make you walk in circles, then make you turn your into water. (14) The hole has dramatic potential; Unlike the previous two examples that are morbidly
back on the thing you fear, then give you a severe one thinks of several Hitchcock films where the enlarged versions of familiar prototypes, the third
fright, and then deny you the answer to a question villain goes slowly over the edge, it is not hard to example exists only as an idea on paper. It is a plan
any bird could solve in a moment. When you do fall, imagine that scene repeated here. (15) It is per- of a house taken from J.-F. Blondel's collection of

you will hit the sides before hitting the bottom. haps not quite as extreme as H.P. Lovecraft's 1 737, De la distribution des maisons de plaisance
Death with time to think about it arriving awaits nightmare city of R'lyeh whose cyclopean non- (Figure 6).29 Plaisance refers to the owner's taste,
anyone who peers too far into that hole.20 Euclidean masonry rises from the ocean floor, but not to any other sort of pleasure; distribution is
What we have here is a geometrical oddity: an it might pass for it in a low-budget film.25 (16) used in its Vitruvian sense of harmoniously bal-
edge over which it is impossible to look.21 Because During the past war, this mock-satanic object was ancing individual details with the house as a whole.
you can see the endless walls of the abyss both subject to attacks by the Royal Air Force, who All the main rooms are symmetrical, yet, in a
below you and facing you, nothing is hidden except practiced dropping bouncing bombs on it.26 (17) masterpiece of planning, Blondel squeezes a hidden
what is down the hole. Standing on the rim, you are Yet its solidity may be an illusion; geologically world into the interstices complete with stairs and
very close to a mystery: a space receiving the light speaking, dams are transient. Abandoned without doors to the outside. Like Venice, or one of Eschews
of the sun into which we cannot see. In no partic- maintenance, the dam would probably fail in as drawings of interlocking worlds, the house has
ular order, let us count some of the ways it can be little as a century through overflow erosion after a double circulation system. Where these worlds
described. opportunistic trees block the bellmouths.27 (18) It cross, a visitor might only see poché walls and
(1) It resembles a black hole, a darkness that flows with water only rarely and most of the time is hardly suspect that secret passages run behind the
is fatal to approach and beyond which nothing can as inert and useless as Dante's Satan frozen at the paneling, allowing servants discreet access to every
be known. The diminishing rings of stone speak of center of the earth. (19) It is not even unique; the room whose windows are open to light and air from
the compression of space as the event horizon is dam has a pair of them. Either one of them is the garden. What a wonderful house for a party if
approached.22 (2) The curve on the top ring makes redundant and so if one were to vanish, probably you could bear the expense of all those servants

27 CROMPTON

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 5. Hyperbolic edge to the Ladybower bellmouth, 1935-1944.
(Photograph by Peter Byrne 1991.)

in a dream through iron scrollwork gates, or

a green door, or from the wreckage of a plane in
the Himalayas. It is a door to a garden where no
black arrow is to be found: a door to a world
without death.

Conclusions
It cannot be said that these three objects resist
representation perfectly since they retain enough of
their purpose to be dismissed as a joke, or as
emerging from the walls like spirits, present but one is always exposed in plain view and eventually plumbing, or as a servicing strategy. Only if we are
unseen like services in a modern building.30 everything goes down the hole. Spatially, Blondel's willing do they reveal themselves as a providential
What riches we have here, what an excess of house is hyperbolic because the hidden realms message, or as an example of natural sublime, or as
possibilities in which familiar pleasures are enliv- connect with the open ones and provide inter- an ¡mage of the ineffable. Taken together, these
ened by mystery. In providing comfort and conve- twined circulation opportunities so that it will seem examples possess a sort of dignity and economy
nience, Blondel's house is heimlich in many of the to expand in front of you as it is explored. Elliptical that recall objects of meditation. They are able to
senses that Freud lists for that word, but it could space, as found in black holes and closed universes, play a game with existence and nonexistence
easily become unheimlich, that is, uncanny.31 It is finite, whereas hyperbolic space, such as we because they are all places where, ¡n different ways,
would make a very good house for spying, for experience here, is open and infinite with an excess people vanish. They tell, ¡n an oblique sort of way,
a secret introduction, for a murder mystery, or for of space that appears as ripples and folds when stories of death, hell, and heaven.
a place to hold a seance. There* will be little privacy seen from a higher dimension.32 They are hard to photograph. The ¡mage of the
in a place like this, one can stroll from room to room Oddly, Blondel's plan does not show any black arrow is probably the only one in existence,
where almost anything might be going-on, although doors, and it is unclear where the entrance is and good as Byrne's photograph of the Ladybower
that is probably a price worth paying for all the supposed to be. An arrow might have helped, but overflow ¡s, ¡t does not really tell you what ¡t ¡s like
opportunities for gossip, comedy, intrigue, and where should it point? Perhaps there is another to stand on the rim. It should be stressed that it

love. No ladder would be needed to elope from an way to read Blondel's plan. Instead of seeing it as would not make sense to do measured drawings of
upstairs bedroom here; the backstairs would do just something entered from the garden, look at it as them. Surveying Asbestos House, most architects
as well. The possibility of a secret escape fuels the something entered from below by the little inter- would not record the arrow because they would not
imagination: think of the tunnel the Count of nal staircase, first into the servant's quarters, then see it; until it is pointed out, it is simply invisible as I
Monte Christo digs in the Chateau d'lf, or of James into the house itself, and then finally into the experienced myself. As for the Ladybower overflow,
Bond crawling through ducts, or Harry Lime garden. Because this Ancien Régime fantasy is an I can only say, "Reader, try it yourself."33 You could
vanishing down the sewers in Vienna in the film interface between the first and the third estates parody them, you could joke about them, and you
The Third Mon. (in the British expression between "upstairs and could ask if a photograph does them justice, but in
It is also a superb place to play hide-and-seek. downstairs"), to make that journey is to change doing this, you are already speaking about them as
Not only are there a lot of places to hide but also scales, class of people, language, dress, and if they were more like people than buildings.
there are loops in the circulation system that will habits of thought. The movement outward is Because they are immaterial and elusive, we relate
allow someone who switches hiding places to stay a spatial expansion from confined to open, ellip- to them in a different way to buildings whose
ahead of a pursuer. It will not be possible to keep tical to hyperbolic, dark to light, and from work to memorable silhouette we recognize in an instant.
watch on someone in this house using much less play. In every respect, crossing that boundary Such buildings may be ¡conic, and they may be
than a guard in every room; in this respect, it is the improves your life. The constricted corridor is beautiful, but they cannot stir us ¡n the way
opposite of a Panopticon that can be supervised by a narrow gate that opens into a larger, lighter a mystery can. After all, a silhouette is usually just
a single person. This is one reason why it will feel world. Understood metaphorically, it is a sensual a profile, but here, we encounter the larger themes
safe compared to the Ladybower bellmouth, where ¡mage of a transition that is usually accomplished of life face-to-face.

Three Doors to Other Worlds 28

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 an elevated walkway on twelve piers forming radial cutwaters. I can see no
sign that it was ever built. It may have been omitted as a wartime economy
measure or for fear it would attract the wrong type of tourist. If the
walkway had been built, I calculate that a tall person leaning rashly over
its balustrade would have able to see at most seventy feet below water
level, nowhere near the bottom of the hole as it turns out. Ladybower
reservoir is in the Hope Valley, Derbyshire. Local standards: three miles
from Ladybower, the long established Peak Cavern show cave changed
its name in 2001 to The Devil's Arse.

19. 'The Ladybower Reservoir," The Engineer: 441.

20. In freefall, it will take a little over three seconds to reach the bottom.
21 . This does not limit the depth as much as you might think. To take
an extreme example: if the steps were to decrease harmonically, for
example, 1 foot, 1/2 foot, 1/3 foot

over four feet forward. The next four feet will take over 1500 steps. No
vertical view is ever possible because the series sum increases without limit,
though very slowly. This is a true hyperbolic edge. Ladybower is not
quite this severe but nearly as bad. Its interest comes from the fact that
you can never quite get to the edge; it is always a little further away from
where you find yourself.
22. Event horizon: the boundary in spacetime around a black hole beyond
which it is impossible to return.
23. Devil's Staircase, see Benoit B. Mandelbrot, The Fractal Geometry of
Nature (San Francisco: W.H. Freeman, 1977, 1983), p. 82.
24. The Deep Blue Sea is a play by Terence Rattigan about a suicidal
6. Une maison de plaisance, J.-F. Blondel, 1737. (Photo by author.)
dilemma. 'The Devil and the Deep Blue Sea" is a song by Ted Koehler and
Harold Arlen.
Notes are drawn in the same way: http://catless.ncl.ac.uk/sharp/ (accessed 25. Michel Houellebecq, H.P. Lovecraft: Against the World, Against Life
1 . Dunciad, book IV, lines 3 and 4. In James Sutherland ed., The Poems of July 14, 2008). (San Francisco: Believer Books, 2005), pp. 153-54.
Alexander Pope (London: Methuen, 1943), vol. 5, p. 339. 1 1 . Caroline Constant, The Woodland Cemetery: Towards a Spiritual 26. During the war, the Ladybower reservoir was used by the RAF to
2. André Breton, Mad Love (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press Landscape (Stockholm: Byggforlaget, 1994), pp. 133-35. test Barnes Wallis's bouncing bomb. It later doubled as the Ruhr valley
[L'Amour fou, 1937], 1987), p. 28 (italics in the original). Photographs of 12. Ibid., figure 46. for the 1955 war film The Dam Busters about the use of that weapon.
the objects by Man Ray are on pp. 29, 31 . 13. Asbestos House, Fountain Street, Manchester, by Cruickshank & 27. The two engineers I asked thought trees would be the problem.
3. Ibid., p. 28. Seward Architects, 1959, demolished 1999. For the dam to fail, they estimated between one hundred and two
4. Ibid., p. 30 (italics in the original). 14. Letraset was a system of dry transfer symbols widely used by archi- hundred years.
5. Ibid., p. 28. tects before the advent of computer graphics. 28. See 'The Ladybower Reservoir," The Engineer: 442.
6. Longinus, "On the Sublime," in Classical Literary Criticism, T.S. Dorsch, 1 5. R. Bringhurst, The Elements of Typographic Style (Vancouver: Hartley 29. J.-F. Blondel, De la distribution des maisons de plaisance (Farnborough:
trans. (London: Penguin, 1 965), p. 1 27. & Marks, 1992), p. 75. Gregg Press [1737], 1967), p. 123 (Layout of Country Houses).
7. Edmund Burke, A Philosophical Enquiry into the Origin of Our Ideas of 1 6. In Edmund Burke's A Philosophical Enquiry into the Origin of Our 30. David Bass, 'Towering Inferno: The Metaphoric Life of Building
the Sublime and Beautiful (Oxford: Oxford University Press [1 757], 1 990), Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful, the following sections apply to Services," AA Files 30 (1995): 26-34.
pp. 54-55, 1 58-61 . See W.J J. Mitchell, Iconology (Chicago: University of Ladybower. Part Two: Terror (section II), Obscurity (section III), Power 31. Sigmund Freud, The Uncanny (London: Penguin [1919], 2003),
Chicago Press, 1986), pp. 125-27. (section V), Privation (section VI), Vastness (section VII), Infinity pp. 126-34. See Anthony Vidler, The Architectural Uncanny (Cambridge:
8. Thomas Sharp, Town and Townscape (London: John Murray, 1968), (section VIII), Succession and Uniformity (section IX), Magnitude MIT Press, 1992), pp. 3-20.
pp. 43-44. (section X), Infinity (section XI), and Difficulty (section XII). 32. Margaret Wertheim, A Field Cuide to Hyperbolic Space (Los Angeles:
9. Cullen Cordon, The Concise Townscape (London: Architectural Press, 17. John Ruskin, The Seven Lamps of Architecture (London: George Institute for Figuring, 2007), pp. 11-49.
1961), pp. 17-41. Allen, 1880, 1891), p. 142. 33. I do not mean that Ladybower could not be surveyed at all; a stee-
10. Thomas Sharp, Exeter Phoenix: A Plan for Rebuilding (London: 18. Drawings in an anonymous article 'The Ladybower Reservoir," The plejack could do it with ladders and scaffolding, but a person on their own
Architectural Press, 1946), p. 100. Thomas Sharp's proposals for Durham Engineer 138 (November 1939): 440-42 show the overflow mastered by would be flummoxed.

29 CROMPTON

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