Studio Thadian Pillai

Herd is a response to historic earthworking on the Hylands Estate in the east of England, developed in the eighteenth century by the landscape designer, Humphry Repton.  Describing a volume of space, the work codifies the historic land form of the ‘ha-ha’; the walled ditch that prevented livestock grazing near the house, and that extended views into the parkland beyond.  It references both traditional and contemporary landscape theory in its concepts of scale, proximity, connectivity and 'the view'; all part of the constructed grammar of the language of landscape.  

In its final form, reminiscent of livestock gathering beneath the horse chestnut tree, the work reminds us of the historic function of the ha-ha, and the extent to which the existence of the house has always been, and remains, dependent on the productivity of its landscape.