The Seven Follies of Wallington - Ruskin Archive Part 1 Project 2007 Elizabeth Makinson Newcastle University | UK The Seven Follies of Wallington act as transitional stepping-stones to the Wallington landscape and to the philosophies of John Ruskin; they portray the evolution of the cube as it fragments, mimicking the neglect of its landscape. As the follies punctuate the landscape they gradually unravel, exposing more of their deepening textures and complexities. The material palette chosen reveals through weathering the temporality of nature. The detailing, orientation and choice of cladding is designed to finally disintegrate into a built ruin, the stone clad archive monumentalised, by a developing patina of neglect… The project sought to explore the powerful themes of Metaphor and Material in John Ruskin’s work and thought: it proposed an archive to house the vast collection of Ruskin’s drawings, paintings, daguerrotypes and library. The evocative setting was Wallington House in the Northumberland countryside - a place with strong Ruskinian associations. This scheme resonantly imbricated readings of Ruskin and the English landscape, adopting for example, the themes of fragment and folly (reflecting Ruskin’s fragmentary vision) to realise an eroded lakeside cubic pavilion, sustainably crafted in English oak, and finely represented with a concern for freehand draughtsmanship analogous to Ruskin’s own.