A Tent for Lovers
“The hammock of love lies in the small garden of the most agreeable delights” the visionary architect Jean-Jacque Lequeu wrote in 1810. This text described a plate illustrating an intimate space “inside a lush garden that contains flowers producing the ‘odor of paradise.’ ” A space designed, of course, exclusively for human pleasure. Hidden in a clearing between the manicured Rose Gardens and wild forests of the Crane Estate in Ipswich, Massachusetts, lies an updated version of Lequeu’s romantic design. A folly that celebrates assemblages within and across species —a heterotopia that blends the boundaries between human and non-human agents.