Ebook: fantasy worlds

ONE DAY, FERDINAND CHEVAL, A FRENCH POST-
MAN, came across a stone at Hauterives near Lyon,
and was fascinated by its strange, evocative shape. He
spent the next three decades collecting stones, shells
and fossils, and used them to bulld the Palais Idéal.
Cheval’s palace is one of more than 100 works of architec-
tural fantasy in this book, the result of over 20 years’
research by celebrated architectural photographer
Deidl von Schaewen. Like Cheval, the creators of these
extraordinary worlds simply started building, with no
rules to guide them and, in most cases, no previous
artistic experience. These fantasy palaces, bizarre
sanctuaries and colourful sculpture gardens seldom
follow a plan. Often the artists continued building for
many years, sometimes until their dying day. Their work
is impossible to categorize: Art Brut, architecture with-
out architects, self-taught art, fantasy architecture in
the tradition of Piranesi, non-academic architecture,
Outsider Art - none of these definitions quite encapsu-
lates this worldwide phenomenon, Eccentric hideaways
like the Tour de l‘Apocalypse in Belgium, the Junker-
us at Lerngo or the Owl house in South Africa appear
alongside Simon Rodia's Watts Towers, which dominate
the cityscape of Los Angeles. To venture into this world
is to immege oneself in the collective unconscious.