The labyrinth is the only architectural metaphor for discontinuity and "no place"; it suggests constant movement. There is no place in the labyrinth.
Peter Eisenman
I noted this quote down as I found something interesting in it, although I couldn't clearly define what it was. As soon as I mentioned it in the tutorial, I regretted it. I had this really strong image in my head of the labyrinth built in Crete by Dedalus, to imprison Minotaur, and did not really see the structural connection between this, the Barbican and what I had in mind (however vague) for this project.
However, this idea stayed with me and slowly I came to realise that, actually, most of the experiments I have done and things I have researched are dealing with some aspects of labyrinth and it is, in fact, a common ground of my work:
controlling spaces - Barbican as a place that you have to learn to navigate through, in a way imprisoning you by making it difficult to find a way out - or ways between places
panoramic images - warping spaces to confuse directions and relations between their elements - where a straight wall begins to look like a curved one; an element is fragmented in space, with parts pulled forward/pushed back; depth of field is distorted when zooming in so it's not possible to assess distance
frame experiments - although they do not relate to the project directly at this stage, do not feed its development yet, what they do have is a structural, spatial feel applied to movement; when developed into three dimensional spatial configurations, they can easily develop into a maze of a kind themselves
magnifying distortion that I applied to films taken outdoors - by multiplying the space and layering it in different sized, I achieved a dizzying, confusing vision of it and in a way replicated the feeling you can get when walking inside the centre first time - where every turn you take seems to lead you into a space that looks almost the same as the one before...
Finally, having gone through all my work, I realised the uncanny connection between labyrinth and utopia - both mean "no place" - one in the language system and one in architectural terms. What I need to do now is evaluate my work so far with this in mind and develop it in this direction. With a common ground I can look into ways of combining all the research and experiments into one piece.
frame experiments - although they do not relate to the project directly at this stage, do not feed its development yet, what they do have is a structural, spatial feel applied to movement; when developed into three dimensional spatial configurations, they can easily develop into a maze of a kind themselves
magnifying distortion that I applied to films taken outdoors - by multiplying the space and layering it in different sized, I achieved a dizzying, confusing vision of it and in a way replicated the feeling you can get when walking inside the centre first time - where every turn you take seems to lead you into a space that looks almost the same as the one before...
Finally, having gone through all my work, I realised the uncanny connection between labyrinth and utopia - both mean "no place" - one in the language system and one in architectural terms. What I need to do now is evaluate my work so far with this in mind and develop it in this direction. With a common ground I can look into ways of combining all the research and experiments into one piece.
