Winter Garden. Animated Architecture /Inanimated nature

Abstract

Ever since Nikolaus Pevsner turned him into the main character of Pioneers of Modern Design in 1936, William Morris (1834-1896) has been considered the founding figure of Modern design and Modern architecture, both at a doctrinarian and a practical level. Morris based his ideas on the conviction that art had stopped having real roots to it and that the idea of art understood as art for everybody had disappeared. The call for art for everybody was not his only demand, he also demanded a return to traditional crafts and an art which was able to express Mans’ pleasure when working. As Pevsner points out, in William Morris’ thinking aesthetics and sociology cannot be disassociated, neither can art be apart from moral issues, politics or religion, as had happened before in his masters’ ideas, Pugin and Ruskin who were strong supporters of Gothic art forms, honesty and truthfulness in any kind of design. Even though, William Morris’ apprenticeship was simultaneously in architecture and painting, he devoted himself to the practice of applied arts, and for this purpose he founded his own workshop. He also ventured into the world of literature, more specifically, the world of poetry. The three volumes which make up his poem entitled The Earthly Paradise, published between 1868 and 1870, bring together a piece of writing which presents a distinct social vision that can be inscribed within the so-called Pastoral tradition whose distinctive marks would be making reference to the past, the relation between man and nature and social homogeneity. The so-called Pastoral tradition also known as Arcadian tradition, which has its origin in Ancient Times, was a predominant tendency within English poetry during the XVI and XVII centuries. It received a new impulse with the Romantic and Victorian poets during the XIX century, since they broadened and enriched their topics, their ways of expression and their points of view. This new Pastoralism establishes a certain connection with architecture, both in terms of how it understands society and in terms of the stylistic treatment of landscape. It refers to the society of shepherds as the means to preserve rural lifestyle. The landscapes which are repeatedly brought forward by William Morris will have particular features, real ones, linked to a particular place and so the imagery he uses will be those of the countryside closest to London and the existing farms located on the banks of the River Thames.