'I am not sure I exist,' says Es Devlin, dramatically. 'Actually, I am the sum total of every book I've ever read, every one I've ever loved, every mountain I've ever walked over.'
The artist and designer is quoting Jorge Luis Borges because, she insists: 'That's genuinely my feeling.' And it’s a relatable one at that.
For Devlin, books are the architecture of a life, with every author leaving an imprint. 'Every time you read anything,' she says, 'the architecture of one's brain is changed. Every time you have a new thought you change.'
It’s this belief that inspired her newest work, Library of the Four Winds. Sponsored by Penhaligon's, the poetic installation at Castle Howard – Britain's best-known country house, recognised globally as the setting for Brideshead Revisited and, more recently, Bridgerton – in North Yorkshire, the installation has been conceived to mark the tricentenary of Sir John Vanbrugh's death. The work transforms the architect's folly, the Temple of the Four Winds, into a rotating library composed of more than 250 books drawn from Devlin's personal collection.
Es Devlin's books illuminate Castle Howard's Temple of the Four Winds
The books are arranged into a luminous revolving sculpture and accompanied by recordings of the artist reading selected passages aloud. 'I've made a revolving library,' she explains. 'It's very personal to me. It's a library of all the books that make me who I am.'
The commission finds an unexpectedly sympathetic historical counterpart in Vanbrugh himself. Although best known today as the architect of Castle Howard and Blenheim Palace, Vanbrugh's career defied easy categorisation. He was a playwright, political activist, soldier, theatre manager and sometime prisoner, as well as an architect. Devlin was less interested in responding directly to his buildings than to the restless, expansive, charismatic character of 'Van the man'.
Sir John Vanbrugh’s legacy
Es Devlin at Sir John Vanbrugh's Temple of the Four Winds
'I would respond more to the texture of the man's being, the texture of the man's choices,' she says. 'There he is, at once a man of letters and the theatre, designing the Haymarket at the same time he's building Blenheim Palace.' Particularly of note was Vanbrugh's fascination with systems – literary, political and architectural. 'I think he was interested in systems. I think he cared about geometry,' says Devlin. 'That's what I see as the common denominator between the work in literature, the work in architecture, the work in politics. It's a fascination that underpins a courage and a desire to make change.'
His relentless curiosity resonates strongly with Devlin's own practice, which has moved effortlessly between theatre, opera, public art, architecture and performance (as mapped in her 2023 monograph). Looking back at Vanbrugh and his contemporaries, she sees a period before knowledge had been divided into separate disciplines. 'These were men who were making architecture. They were also, as they made their architecture, creating scientific experiments,' she says, pointing to the intellectual culture that produced figures such as Vanbrugh, Christopher Wren and Robert Hooke. 'This was a period where knowledge was understood to be something holistic. If you were a man of letters, of course you'd be a man of architecture as well.'
The setting of the Temple of the Four Winds amplifies those ideas. Perched on a promontory overlooking the Castle Howard estate, it is at once pavilion, viewpoint and retreat. A place for refreshment and reading alike. 'What I love about that building is there is no specifically designed, defined purpose for it,' says Devlin.
Beyond the revolving library itself, four curved tables circle the temple, inviting visitors to sit together, talk and/or browse books from Devlin's shelves. The project arrives during the UK's National Year of Reading, which for Devlin is about more than the promotion of literacy. She sees reading instead as a social act – a way of encountering other minds.
'We really hope this is going to encourage people to come, to sit, to meet each other through texts,' she says.
The books on display are hers, and are not only well leafed, but covered in annotations accumulated over years of reading. 'I tend to only read with a pencil in my hand,' she says. 'I either underline things or I get in a rage with them and go, “No!” next to them.'
The passages visitors hear throughout the installation are taken from those markings: sentences that most challenged, delighted or changed the artist. Among the titles Devlin references are The Gift by Lewis Hyde; The Fire Next Time by James Baldwin; and Are We Human? by Beatriz Colomina and Mark Wigley. Quotations from Jorge Luis Borges and Audre Lorde also form part of the installation's intellectual framework.
'Most books I read change me,' she says, 'but these are the ones without which I probably wouldn't have the worldview that I do.'
Library of the Four Winds is on view until 27 September 2026
castlehoward.co.uk