Follies

I was looking for anything surprising about Yeovil.

“Folly” is an architectural term which means much the same as the usual term, except constrained to a specific kind of architectural foolishness, instead of the whole range. A ‘folly’ is the thing you have if you make your structure not just mostly functionless and ornamental, but ornamental to a point considered too pointlessly ornamental for even best practice ornamentation.

Yeovil seems to like follies. Exactly how many of their buildings are overly ornamental is a matter of opinion (complicated by the issue of whether they get credit for all the ones that are underly ornamental) but there are at least four publicly agreed follies nearby. I like this one:

(Rose Tower, Yeovil)

I’m not sure that my investigation into from whence I came yielded much in the way of useful insight. Everyone’s youth has follies. I suppose if you want to recover from those follies, it is helpful to know that some of them are about poor architectural judgment.

Though I actually pretty much guessed that I needed better architectural judgment when in playing Minecraft recently I nearly finished this tall domed pink tower, with silver streaks circling down it and a wide rounded base — climbing as I built — then stepped away to look at it (see far below). I am not sure what the architectural jargon name is for this kind of foolishness, but there is apparently a world class instance of it very near where I am currently staying:

“Ypsilanti Water Tower in Ypsilanti, Michigan, winner of the “Most Phallic Building contest” (by Dwight Burdette — Own work, CC BY 3.0)

A monument to my own romantic obliviousness perhaps, for which a 25m high stone penis outside my door is arguably apt.

Originally published at worldlypositions.tumblr.com.