The villa is a substantial rural or suburban residence that often includes accessory uses, so that it constitutes a “hybrid” program. The classic example is the agricultural villa, which developed in classical times from the rude farmsteads that preceded them into some of the most elaborate building complexes ever constructed. In many villas, the production of wealth and the defense capabilities required to maintain that wealth are built into the program, along with some comfortable quarters for the owner. The archetypical Southern plantation was based on the same principles as the ancient Greek and Roman villas—large areas of arable land were worked by enslaved people to provide commodities—the Bitcoin of their day. Housing, feeding, and policing these slaves required overseers and onsite services such as blacksmiths, an infirmary, counting house, storage facilities, coopers—everything that you needed to grow, store, and transport grain had to be provided on-site from materials on-hand. In other words, the villa is almost always at least a small settlement with multiple buildings serving multiple purposes.
Now fast-forward to the 20th century and consider the concealed lairs of various fictional super-villains. Ian Fleming’s Dr. No, for example, lives on a remote, uninhabited island somewhere in the Caribbean near Jamaica called Crab Key. Power, water, and all the utilities available in developed parts of the world are somehow present at the doctor’s elegant undersea villa; as is a fully-operational missile-jamming system aimed at disrupting the US Defense Program. While this may seem a stretch, the underlying principle is sound—Dr. No’s villa is a different kind of a hybrid program, one where agricultural gain is replaced with world domination. It remains a hybrid villa program nevertheless.
Perhaps the greatest villa yet conceived is the fictional Captain Nemo’s Nautilus in 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea. I am sure that Nemo’s great window with its mechanical eyelid served as a model for Dr. No’s more modest stationary picture window. The Nautilus is the first fully-mobile, large-scale residence ever conceived of, and contains all of the programmatic requisites to be considered as a villa—it has a large staff/crew, is terrifyingly weaponized, stealthy, able to pass unobserved for years, and most importantly, is capable of amassing vast wealth. Instead of mining the fields around it, this villa mines the seafloor. Sunken treasure, giant pearls, untold riches. Jules Verne supposedly modeled the ship on his cousin’s neat Scottish mansion with its trimmed hedges and borders, set among the coal mines that completely encircled the house with their derricks and smoke and stink.
One of the most important guiding principles of good villa design is that the business-end should be close at hand to the main residence, but as concealed as possible. Noise and smell control are as critical as visual control. Underlying the principle of good villa design is the separation of incompatible uses and social classes. For these reasons, interesting hierarchies of “nesting” occur within villas, so that services can be provided without the unpleasantness of social interaction. Ironically, secret passageways designed to allow servants to change bedpans unobserved become the routes of the wicked within the upper echelon of the household.
In many villas, separation is required to protect the occupants from noxious uses, as well as unwelcome interaction with the servants. In some villains’ villas, separation is required to keep visitors and the uninvited away from clandestine activities. Whatever the cause, the result is what makes many villas so architecturally compelling—they are less like houses and more like small self-contained cities, made-up of many complementary structures.
Imperial Rome created the breakout moment for villas. Once-modest country escapes from the city in summer during Greek and Republican times grew into bizarre centers of power and patronage, creating a model that has been followed ever since. Hadrian’s Villa at Tivoli was the center of Roman government during the hot weather months. A special postal service was set up to cross the 18-kilometer distance to the city so that business could be transacted from the estate. Most male members of the patrician class were present, including the Senators, but women were not allowed. Hadrian could only abide one woman, his original nanny, who he kept in residence with him until he died. This illustrates a salient point about why bad people like this type of accommodation: You can pretty much carry on as you wish in plain sight as long as you are shielded from prying eyes. The villa, even a modest one, is perfect for that. Following this era, villa design remained more or less static, achieving its peak perfection in the work of Andrea Palladio, who designed the sublime Villa Rotunda—the most beautiful farmhouse ever.
The shocks of the 19th and 20th centuries upended the ancient orders around the world. Slavery was, if not abolished, at least criminalized; replaced by contract labor and increasingly, mechanization. During this time, the role of the villa evolved and became more abstract, as actually producing anything of serious consequence ’on premises’ became increasingly less practical. The elimination of slave labor has also eliminated much of the hand-built perfection that makes us all love those old buildings so much. Today, the villa archetype has largely devolved into a mere checklist of “features” listed in real estate jargon and produced in faux-something style using synthetic materials. Witness the recent revelations about Putin’s palaces and Medvedev’s mansions, which look like kitschy real estate from nowhere.
But even kitsch is instructive, as the mind-bending concept of Stalin’s multiple identical villas shows. Stalin had seven identical dachas constructed across Russia, painted Russian Army Green and furnished identically, then staffed with Stalin-doubles; all to confound his many enemies. An artistically repulsive idea is a pragmatically brilliant one. Good design in this context is not just aesthetics, and sometimes it’s even anti-aesthetic. What makes it “good” is that the villa serves its purpose efficiently and with comfort—and, whenever possible, with beauty.
Because they are such damaged individuals, villains can create bizarre and fantastic building-complexes that allow us to study the seven deadly sins through the lens of home design. Pride, wrath, greed, envy, lust, gluttony, and sloth (plus a sometimes eighth sin: melancholy) are all classic villain traits. This list covers all known human motivations for villainy, so it is possible to make a simple typological checklist with which to measure a villain and their motives.
The same can be done to assess the success or failure of a villa to abet villainy. Is the property an accessory to the owner’s crimes? Does the property help to conceal or mislead people about the true nature of the owner’s interests? Does the property project an image of power and even intimidation to reinforce the owner’s aura of invincibility?
A villain’s villa should have defensive capabilities including panic rooms, active and passive barriers, and of course, an arsenal. Secret passage escape routes are a must.
Like everything else in their monomaniacal orbits, villains value real estate as a means to an end. It must be disposable, like the people they use. Villains’ villas rarely survive their owners by many years. Once a human pariah has vacated a property, no one except another twisted person wants to inhabit it. The vibes are too powerful, the stain too great. Places inhabited by evil are themselves forever tainted. The final requirement of good villa design is in its value as a ruin. Ruins are instructive, as Ozymandias reminds us, and civilization is fleeting. The collapse of anything significant is generally an occasion for sadness. That changes when the place is cursed and its ruins bring a catharsis. Among all of the images of fallen evil expressed in ruins, the photo that Lee Miller took of GIs milling about in front of the burned-out picture window in the living room of Hitler’s Bavarian retreat stands out as a stunner. It shows a 12-foot-high by 16-foot-long opening which, before its destruction, had held an enormous picture window. The window, designed by Ferdinand Porsche, could disappear into the floor in order to open the room completely to the spectacular view. Only now it is 1945, and the room is open to the view even more. The window and portions of the roof have been blown to smithereens by aerial strafing and bombardment. The interior is a shambles and you feel in this picture, or I do at least, that somehow the architecture has been punished in order to cleanse it of evil.
We are entering a new age in which heretofore only dreamt-of villa types could appear. Mobile villas like Nautilus are a very real possibility, as are stealth villas that are completely hidden in plain sight. Eventually, extraterrestrial villas orbiting the earth could become a hot real estate commodity. Human nature will continue to be defined by the seven deadly sins and will only evolve slowly, if at all. Design and technology, on the other hand, are evolving at such a high rate of speed that even villainy itself may be rendered obsolete. In the meantime, we are entering a new golden age of villains’ villas as undreamt-of wealth accumulates in the hands of a new breed of free-enterprise super criminal. As always, there will be artists and architects to take on the work. But let us not judge them harshly. The Medici may have been monsters, but their artists and architects left us some of the most beautiful treasures the world has seen. The relationship between art and evil is complex and fraught—perhaps villains are the best patrons and clients because they are passionate to a fault, and their egoism recognizes a kindred spirit in the driven artist and architect.
“Villains’ Villas” is an excerpt from the introduction to an in-progress book-length manuscript of the same title.
Walter Chatham (NA 2011) studied painting at the New York Studio School and the Philadelphia College of Art before receiving a Bachelor of Architecture from the University of Maryland in 1978. He did post-graduate work at the Institute for Architecture and Urban Studies, where he was assistant to Peter Eisenman, FAIA.
His present firm, Walter Chatham Architect, was founded in 1986, and has received numerous awards, including two National American Institute of Architects Distinguished Architecture Awards.
Walter is currently Co-Chair of the National Academy of Design and also chairs the City of Hudson New York Planning Board.
