Everytime I go down to Bath to see my brother I find a new little part of town which has some intriguing feature. When I was down last weekend I went passed Camden Crescent for the first time and thought it was absolutely marvellous, a real comedy of errors, a rich symphony of mistakes. I got really excited by the promising start the CRA (Camden Residents Association) have made in tapping into its latent potential.
The terraced crescent itself is interesting in that it isn’t symmetrical and whilst built in a Neo-Classical style has none of the rigour that Neo-Classical architecture usually represents. The architect, John Eveleigh, intended for it to have 22 gently curving houses but with the Eastern end being subject to landslide and a steeply falling away slope the crescent does not exist as designed...an example of the consequence of poor site analysis perhaps? I haven’t found out whether the crescent was ever completed and has since fallen away or whether work stopped when it got to the poorer ground. Both are exciting possibilities, the former being rather dramatic and the later being a being a reflection of the ad hoc nature of the speculative builders of Bath. I would love to have been a fly on the wall when the architect/builders realised that the rather ostentatious scheme couldn’t be completed and would have to remain lopsided for perpetuity.
I think, however, that the fairly monolithic blank wall at the East End suggests that the former is more likely, even once realising that they had balls’d it up I think the builders would have wanted to bookend the terrace with something special. The rather severe cut like end points to the removal of a no longer existent section.
Even without the glaringly obvious asymmetry of the Crescent there is another fairly major architectural faux pas. The grand (off)central property is decorated with a classical pediment held up by five columns. All classical porticos should have an even number of columns for the obvious reason that having an odd number leaves a column on the central axis. Mind you this isn’t unique amongst Georgian Neo-Classical architecture despite being “bad practice”. For all the Neo-Classical ideal of rigour and simplicity many British architects were fairly laxidasical about it. The notable one I can think of is...in Bedford Square by ... A completely incidental tit-bit but Bedford Square is in Camden the first houses of which were built be Charles Pratt the Marquis of Camden whose coat of arms is visible on Camden Terrace as he was an MP for Bath and presumably owned the land, or commissioned the terrace or some such connection. Perhaps the Pratt just liked odd numbered column configurations.
Anyway, despite having a bit of a fetish for imperfections in buildings the real reason I got so excited about Camden Crescent was nothing to do with the architecture but rather the scrap piece of wasteland in front of it.
This land is steeply sloping and has for whatever reason been left to fall into a state of wilderness. Further below the slope a more formal park exists which only serves to highlight how unkempt the land below the houses is. The Camden Residents Association has decided to unlock the potential in this land and have just started to transform it.
To start clearing the land the CRA have employed a fantastic method. Rather than spending a considerable amount of money by going in with diggers, men and chemicals three pigs have been put into the area and as they go about their business they rut the ground clearing it of all but the large trees and shrubs whilst simultaneously breaking the ground up and fertilising it.
The fact that the residents have infact done nothing to the site is what makes it so interesting. In Adam Caruso’s collection of essays “The Feeling of Things” Cedric Price is praised as someone who knew how powerful doing nothing could be...”Price is one of the few architects I can think of to consistently exercise the artists prerogative to do nothing, or do very little...”
Doing nothing in this case is actually a win-win situation for everyone involved. The farmer who owns the pigs wants to put them out to graze but pigs are notorious for uprooting large areas of land and eliminating the vegetation in the process. The residents have an area of land that needs to be cleared and fertilised ready for gardens to be planted so the pigs can be put on that land. The pigs just want somewhere spacious and safe to live with lots to eat. Whilst they go about their business clearing the ground for the residents free of charge and not destroying their farmers land they act as a novelty in the area. The residents have become endeared to them as is testified by the updates of their wellbeing in the local paper. And as they are slowly moved around the ground by the farmer’s fences the rate of progress can be visually seen. Whilst men with machinery might have done the job in a few days this builds no suspense. It is far more exciting to see the slow progress of the project and the ground slowly turn from waste to blank canvas to gardens.
To continue the quotation from Caruso, “...in his ‘Ducklands’ project of 1991 for Hamburg’s city centre docklands, Price put forward a time based strategy that would enable the vast area of disused docks to return to a semi –wild state and become a much needed habitat for the city’s threatened flora and fauna. This was not intended as a final use for this valuable real estate, but rather a medium term measure...” In effect this is the same idea other than it is being turned from a semi-wild state back into a more managed condition. The pigs aren’t the ultimate result, they are just a means to an end, but it is the pigs that make the whole project exciting.
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