Critical in the perception of any space is our relationship to the sky and ground. Understanding what is up and what is down defines our understanding of what is between. However, when we lose track of these essential features, of where the ground meets the sky, we become lost. Our conceptualization of the space around us becomes ungrounded.

The brief of this project was to create a place for wandering visitors to interact with. The chief goal of this architecture is to separate the wanderer from the landscape they came from. Through a series of halls, stairs, and rooms along a path, the visitors’ relationship to the ground plane is increasingly distorted, producing a new perception of the architecture based only in itself.

While varying staircases bring the wanderer into spaces below and above grade, their only relationship to the outside world is facilitated by unobstructed views of the sky. At its halfway point, the route opens into a roofless box. The total expanse of sky above is visible but also immeasurable. 

In an effort to further explore this concept, the project was presented alongside a series of drawings that tessellate elements of the original structure into dissociative mazes. These imagined landscapes continue the theme of space without any relation to the ground, rooted in itself.