The Allure of the Flap

Abstract

In the late eighteenth-century Humphry Repton coined the term “landscape gardener” and gradually became the first professional landscape architect.1 A considerable part of his success was based on his Red Books—landscape proposals of suggested improvements to the estates of the English landed elite.2 What most clearly distinguished Repton’s approach from those of his predecessors was his use of “the flap”—a graphic device used to showcase the before and after of the proposed transformation. A simple visual trick turned into a marketing tool, transformed otherwise conventional watercolor illustrations into seductive client presentations. By sleight of hand, anything undesirable suddenly vanished from view, and the designed landscape revealed itself, instantaneously giving way to an envisioned future. It wasn’t only the flap as a representational method that was inexhaustible—communicating liveliness, restlessness, and futurity—but, importantly, also its appeal. Even today, the Red Books are evoked as soon as the topic of representation in landscape architecture is touched upon, praised for their innovative depiction of time, movement, and landscape change.3 Repton’s illustrations were one of the first widely admired and repeatedly evoked examples of landscape architectural representation I was introduced to at the start of my bachelor studies. And yet, as far as the reason for their enduring influence goes, I have remained unconvinced; surely the power Repton’s use of the flap exerts upon the field must be attributed to something more than the mere presentation of the existing scene being replaced by the proposed improved one. Why, really, does the allure of the flap linger?