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Follies / Functionless buildings: General resources

This Guide provides location info for print resources and links for digital resources on the (mostly) European tradition of grotesque or picturesque garden structures, Land art, and temporary exhibition structures (e.g. pavilions), overlapping categories

Recommended books

Recommended image resources

MOMA/PS1 Young Architects Program (temporary summer pavilions since 1989)

The Serpentine Gallery Pavilions (temporary summer pavilions since 2000)

Other resources

Folly Fellowship (UK organization to protect “follies, grottoes & garden buildings,” publishes Follies magazine)

Recommended for all architectural research

Specialized resources on related topics

Archer, B. J. & Anthony Vidler, Follies, Rizzoli, NA8460.F64 1983

Headley, Gwyn, Architectural follies in America, John Wiley, NA208.5.H43 1996

Klanten, Robert & Lukas Feireiss, Space craft : fleeting architecture and hideouts, Gestalten, NA209.5.S63 2007

Orlandini, Alain, La Villette, 1971-1995 : a history in projects, Somogy éditions d'art, NA1050.O7513 2004

Rose, Julian, “Objects in the cluttered field: Claes Oldenburg's proposed monuments,” October, #140, Spring 2012, p. 113-138

Taki, Koji, &  Diana Periton, “Osaka Follies,” AA Files, #22, 1991, p. 82–90 (PDF available via Jstor)

Thomsen, Christian W., Visionary architecture, Prestel, NA203.T46 1994

Williams, Tom, “Lipstick ascending: Claes Oldenburg in New Haven in 1969,” Grey room, #31, Spring 2008, p. 116-144 (PDF available via Jstor)

Cousins, Michael, “The landscape at Fonthill: an assessment of the grottoes and their builders,” in Caroline Dakers (Editor),  Fonthill recovered: a cultural history, UCL Press, 2018, p. 247–275 (PDF available via Jstor)

Miller, Norbert, "Steps out of the grotto," Daidalos, #55, 1995, p. 90-99

Rietzsch, Barbara, “Grotto,” Oxford Art Online, 2003

Savage, Robert J. G., “Natural history of the Goldney garden grotto, Clifton, Bristol,” Garden history, Spring 1989, p. 1-40 (PDF available via Jstor)

Taylor, Kristina, “Restoration of the grotto at Villa Salviati,” Garden History, Winter 2012, p. 294–300 (PDF available via Jstor)

Wilson, Anthony Beckles, “Alexander Pope's grotto in Twickenham,” Garden history

"Aquatic Arts," Daidalos, #55, March 1995

Bahamón, Alejandro, Landscape architecture : water features, Rockport, SB475.8.L36 2006

Bishop, Minor L., Fountains in contemporary architecture, American Federation of Arts, NA9405.A5 1965

Currie, Christopher K., “Fishponds as garden features, c. 1550-1750,” Garden History, Spring 1990, p. 22–46 (PDF available via Jstor)

Falda, Giovanni Battista, Le fontane di Roma, Nordlingen, NA9415.R7F3 1996

Gasponi, Giancarlo, et al., Rome, water and stone, Trento, DG815.39G37 1982

Hamadeh, Shirine, “Splash and spectacle: the obsession with fountains in eighteenth-century Istanbul,” Muqarnas, v. 19, 2002, p. 123–148 (PDF available via Jstor)

Jacques, David, “The 'Pond Garden' at Hampton Court Palace: 'One of the best-known examples of a sunk garden',” Garden History, Summer, 2005, p. 87–105 (PDF available via Jstor)

Lohrer, Axel, Designing with water, Birkhäuser, SB475.8.L64 2008

MacDougall, Elisabeth B. “The sleeping nymph: origins of a humanist fountain type,” The Art Bulletin, September 1975, p. 357–365 (PDF available via Jstor)

Mathur, Anuradha, Design in the terrain of water, University of Pennsylvania, GB652.D47 2014

Ruggles, D. Fairchild, Islamic gardens and landscapes, University of Pennsylvania Press, 2008 (ebook available via Ebook Central)

Thacker, Christopher. “Fountains: theory and practice in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries,” Occasional Paper (Garden History Society), #2, 1970, p. 19–26 (PDF available via Jstor)

Topos, Water : designing with water, promenades and water features, Birkhäuser, SB475.8.W35 2002

Werrett, Simon. “Wonders never cease: Descartes's ‘Météores’ and the rainbow fountain,” The British Journal for the History of Science, June 2001, p. 129–147 (PDF available via Jstor)

Balmori, Diana, “Architecture, landscape, and the intermediate structure: eighteenth-century experiments in mediation,” Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians, March 1991, p. 38–56 (PDF available via Jstor)

Goode, Patrick, “Pratolino,” Oxford Art Online, 2003

Hedin, Thomas F., “The Petite Commande of 1664: burlesque in the gardens of Versailles,” The Art Bulletin, December 2001, p. 651–685 (PDF available via Jstor)

Ketcham, Diana, Le Désert de Retz: a late eighteenth century French folly garden, MIT Press, SB466.F83D474 1994

Morgan, Luke, The monster in the garden : reframing renaissance landscape design, University of Pennsylvania Press, 2015 (ebook available via ProQuest Ebook Central)

Smith, Webster, “Pratolino,” Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians, December 1961, p. 155–168 (PDF available via Jstor)

Zimmermann, Reinhard, “Hermitage,” Oxford Art Online, 2003

Note: “Labyrinths” are unicursal, with no dead ends; “mazes” are multicursal, with many dead ends.

Hohmuth, Jürgen, Labyrinths & mazes, Prestel, BL325.L3H64 2003 (Oversize shelf)

Kern, Hermann, Through the labyrinth : designs and meanings over 5000 years, Prestel, BL325.L3K4413 2000

Labyrinthos.net (“labyrinth & maze resource photo library and archive”)

Wilson, F. & N. Bancroft-Hunt, “Labyrinth & maze,” Oxford Art Online, 2014

Baum, Kelly, Nobody’s property : art, land, space, 2000-2010, Princeton University Art Museum, N6494.E6B38 2010

Boettger, S. “Earthworks,” Oxford Art Online, 2015

Earthworks: past and present,” Art Journal, Autumn 1982 (Theme issue)

Grande, John K., Art nature dialogues : interviews with environmental artists, State University of New York Press, 2004 (ebook available via Ebook Central)

Krauss, Rosalind, “Sculpture in the expanded field,” October, #8, Spring 1979, p. 30-44 (PDF available via Jstor)

Kwon, Miwon, One place after another: site-specific art and locational identity, MIT Press, N6490.K93 2002

Pacquement, A. “Land art,” Oxford Art Online, 2003

Smithson, Robert, "Frederick Law Olmstead and the dialectical landscape," in Collected Writings, University of California Press, N7445.2.S62A35 1996

Tiberghein, Gilles A., Land art, Princeton Architectural Press, N6595.E25T53 1995

Coffin, David R., “Venus in the eighteenth-century English garden,” Garden History, Winter, 2000, p. 173-193 (PDF available via Jstor)

Hunt, John Dixon, “Ovid in the garden,” AA Files, #3, 1983, p. 3–11 (PDF available via Jstor)

Keswick, Maggie, “Gardens of the literati,” in The Chinese garden, Rizzoli, SB457.55.K47 1978

Le Dantec, Denise, Reading the French garden : story and history, MIT Press, SB451.36.F8L413 1990

Naito, Akiro, "A stylistic paradox," in Katsura: a princely retreat, Kodansha International, NA1557.K9N353 1977

Woodhouse, Elisabeth, “Propaganda in paradise: the symbolic garden created by the Earl of Leicester at Kenilworth,” Garden history, Spring 2008, p. 94-113 (PDF available via Jstor)

D’Alton, Martina, “The New York Obelisk or how Cleopatra's Needle came to New York …,” The Metropolitan Museum of Art Bulletin, Spring 1993, p. 1, 3-72 (PDF available via Jstor)

Dibner, Bern, Moving the obelisks; a chapter in engineering history …, MIT Press, TH153 .D5 1970

Grafton, Anthony, “Obelisks and empires of the mind,” American scholar, Winter 2002, p. 123-127 (PDF available via Jstor)

Heckscher, William S., “Bernini's elephant and obelisk,” Art Bulletin, September 1947, p. 155-183 (PDF available via Jstor)

Osman, Michael, “Architecture ad absurdum,” Log, #22, 2011, p. 43–46 (PDF available via Jstor)

Swetnam-Burland, Molly, “'Aegyptus redacta': the Egyptian obelisk in the Augustan Campus Martius,” The Art Bulletin, September 2010, p. 135–153 (PDF available via Jstor)

Tompkins, Peter, The magic of obelisks, Harper & Row, DT62.O2 T65 1981

Conner, Patrick, “The Chinese garden in Regency England,” Garden History, Spring, 1986, p. 42-49 (PDF available via Jstor)

Jacobson, Dawn, Chinoiserie, Phaidon Press, N7429.J27 1993

John, Richard, “Pagoda, Europe,” Oxford Art Online, 2003

Riccardi-Cubitt, M., "Chinoiserie," Oxford Art Online, 2003

Siren, Osvald, China and gardens of Europe of the eighteenth century, Dumbarton Oaks, SB457.6.S57 1990

Brodey, Inger Sigrun, Ruined by design : shaping novels and gardens in the culture of sensibility, Routledge, PR858.S45B76 2008

Barkan, Leonard, Unearthing the past : archaeology and aesthetics in the making of Renaissance culture, Yale University Press, NB85.B37 1999

Clark, Kenneth, "Ruins & rococo," in The Gothic revival, Penguin, NA610.C5 1962

Dekkers, Midas, The way of all flesh : the romance of ruins, Farrar, Straus and Giroux, QH529.D4513 2000b

Fritzsche, Peter, Stranded in the present : modern time and the melancholy of history, Harvard University Press, D352.9.F75 2010

Harbison, Robert, Ruins and fragments: tales of loss and rediscovery, Reaktion, CC175.H37 2015

Hunt, John Dixon, "Picturesque mirrors and the ruins of the past," in Gardens and the picturesque, MIT Press, SB457.6.H865 1992

Huyssen, Andreas, “Nostalgia for ruins,” Grey room, #23, Spring 2006, p. 6-21 (PDF available via Jstor)

Orlando, Francesco, Obsolete objects in the literary imagination: ruins, relics, rarities, rubbish, uninhabited places, and hidden treasures, Yale University Press, 2006 (ebook available via Ebook Central)

Roth, Michael S., et al., Irresistible decay : ruins reclaimed, Getty Research Institute, N8237.8.R817 1997

Stewart, David, "Political ruins: gothic sham ruins and the '45," Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians, December 1996, p. 400-411 (PDF available via Jstor)

Jodidio, Philip, Serpentine Gallery pavilions, Taschen, NA6750.L6S4J63 2011

Jodidio, Philip, Temporary architecture now! Taschen, NA8480.J63 2011

Khalili, Parsa, & Alexander Maymind, “Urban follies: technology and the apolitical,” Log, #18, 2010, p. 119–123 (PDF available via Jstor)

Lavin, Sylvia, “Vanishing point: the contemporary pavilion,” Artforum, October 2012 (full text via Artforum.com)

Macarthur, John et al, Pavilion propositions: nine points on an architectural phenomenon, Valiz, NA8450 .M33 2018

MOMA/PS1 Young Architects Program (temporary summer pavilions since 1989)

New portable architecture : designing mobile & temporary structures, Promopress, NA8480.N486 2014

Oyler Wu Collaborative, Trilogy: SCI-Arc pavilions, SCI-Arc Press, NA8450.T75O9 2014

“Pavilions, pop-ups and parasols: the impact of real and virtual meeting on physical space,” Architectural Design, May/June 2015 (Theme issue)

Phillips, Andrea, “Pavilion politics,” Log, #20, 2010, p. 104–115 (PDF available via Jstor)

Self, Martin & Charles Walker, Making pavilions, Architectural Association, NA8450.M35 2011

Souder, Chris, Temporary structure design, Wiley, TH5280.S68 2015 (ebook also available via Ebook Central)

Van Schaik, Leon & Fleur Watson, Pavilions, pop ups and parasols: the impact of social media on physical space, John Wiley & Sons, 2015 (ebook via Proquest Ebook Central) 

Belvedere,” Oxford Art Online, 2003

Byer, Brad, I build the tower, Bench Movies, NA2930.I23 2006 (DVD available at the Media Shelf)

Goldstone, Bud, The Los Angeles Watts Towers, Getty Conservation Institute, NA2930.G65 1997

Heinle, Erwin, Towers : a historical survey, Rizzoli, NA2930.H4513 1989

Trulove, James Grayson, Private towers, Harper Design International, NA2930.T78 2003

Wallach, Alan, “Wadsworth's tower: an episode in the history of American landscape vision,” American Art, Autumn 1996, p. 9–27 (PDF available via Jstor)

Please note

  • These guides are intended to provide initial orientation, and suggest a variety of different lines of investigation—not take the place of individual research.
  • All the resources cited here--print and digital--are available through the Kappe Library at SCI-Arc.Items not available at SCI-Arc are not included.
  • Surveys covering multiple projects are preferred over monographic studies focusing on specific works or individuals.
  • Resources on Los Angeles and Southern California are stressed.
  • Proprietary digital resources (Avery Index, Oxford Art Online, ArtStor, etc) can be accessed on-campus at SCI-ARC via any SCI-Arc internet provider. Off-campus they can be accessed 24/7 via the Kappe Library proxy server, and a valid SCI-Arc Network username and password.

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