Welbeck estate. Desde las entrañas de la tierra John Cavendish-Scott-Bentinck, 5th Duque de Portland (1800-1879)

Abstract

Esta es la historia de una ciudad transformada desde las entrañas de la tierra, un más allá donde las leyes de la razón quedan en suspenso. Una especie de “otra naturaleza”, entendida como un inmaterial desconocido con el que reflexionar sobre la hipótesis de que toda ciudad contiene en sus dobleces un mundo natural. Este ensayo es un posicionamiento, un dialogo en torno a esta singular relación entre ciudad y naturaleza; una reflexión sobre la forma en que las cosas ocurren en el espacio, y aquellas que suceden en el tiempo. Espacios y tiempos desdoblados y plegados sobre sí mismos, como inmateriales con los que el 5th duque construyó esta fascinante escenografía en la que representar su propia vida.

The life of the 5th Duke of Portland is the story of the obsession with finding a spot of quiet, a zone free of worry, a place to feel safe. Perhaps he found there, in that natural and unfolded space of the visible world, the forces to overcome his difficulty, to understand the scale of space; that is, the way in which others establish relationships of similarity, distance or closeness with oneself. Following his appointment as heir to this immense state, almost immediately began a series of investments of an unprecedented scale, which have been considered, technically and conceptually, pioneers in the domestic and landscape transformations of the nineteenth century. Welbeck Estate is a double city, one visible and the other hidden, one in surface, constructed with physical materials; the other less obvious, submerged between shadows and natural substances, flows, energies, scales, processes and senses.This is the story of a city transformed from the bowels of the earth, beyond where the laws of reason are suspended. A kind of “other nature”, understood as an immaterial unknown with which to reflect on the way things happen in space, and those that happen in time. Spaces and times unfolded and folded over themselves, as materials with which the 5th Duke built this fascinating scenery in which to represent his own life.