The Architecture of Liminal Space
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 3 มี.ค. 2021
- Liminal space is everywhere, both literally, and as a popular topic of intrigue on Reddit and other image-sharing platforms. Posting photographs of empty dilapidated spaces followed by collective reminiscing of childhood experiences and uneasy feelings is proving to be a popular activity these days. At one time or another, the liminal spaces depicted in these eerie photos seemed like a good idea, a useful solution to a problem of providing shelter for crowds in the act of movement or commerce. Architecture had specific terms for these spaces too and defined them through theories that explained their role in our culture. In this video, architectural professor Stewart Hicks presents how architects think about liminal spaces, what goes into them, why they exist, and why some architects and artists still work to produce their effect. Topics we visit include: Rem Koolhaas' Junkspace, Exurbansim, Non-place, Supermodernism, Terrain Vauge, photographers like Bas Princen and Filip Dujardin, and 3D artists like Peter Guthrie.
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#liminalspace #architecture
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Are there any other ways that you think liminal spaces are important to architecture?
Apart from the simple "gets you from one place to another" kind of importance, I believe that it has one other important use in architecture. Deterrence. Many of the liminal spaces shown are admired from afar, yes, but many people would not venture there. The feelings of nostalgia and unease would prevent people from wandering in places that were never meant to be used after a certain time. Hell, some spaces in modern shopping centres (malls) can be classified as subtle deterrents, like the halls that house the fire exit. These places would usually stay timeless, and have the aesthetic of being foreboding unless otherwise needed, in the case of a fire or major evacuation. If a building was designed to have liminal spaces be used as a deterrent, it could be better security than a lock and key in some circumstances.
I agree with Barking. If anything, they're used to keep you moving so less ppl loiter.
Honestly, I think the word "liminal" is pretty much misused when only seen as something "uncanny". Liminal - per definition of Victor Turner - only describes the state of ambiguity during the phase between separation from and reconnection to the predominant social norms/conventions/culture. But only when being outside this framework (mentally and/or physically), completely new productive ideas can emerge. So any space that inherently makes this possible is a liminal space. Your home, a train station, a café, a city district, mountain or whatever.
And what we really learn here is that some people simply feel uncomfortable with ambiguity. But for anyone with at least a spark of creativity this is just paradise - a room to take a deep breath and enjoy doing stuff, trying new things etc.
Restored ruins, space for any kinds of sports (skating, freerunning or whatever), places for art workshops, botanical gardens, a pillow corner - you can turn a so-called liminal space in pretty much anything you want.
So yeah, they are important to architecture because they simply represent highly unconstrained potential, which became and still becomes less and less in the urban realm.
Cheers
The threshold to carry over is synonymous with liminal and important. The roots of these word are telling if one thinks of architecture as the father of art. These spaces are like the negative space in a painting. The pause between notes. The blinking of an eye on a journey. How could they be removed and not create total chaos?
I'd hypothesize that because of the kind of discomforting or dissociative state of liminal spaces, it attracts people who deal with dissociative symptoms on an unconscious level. In a way, they are a reflection of society's habit of suppressing thoughts, expressions, psychic struggles. Since these spaces became more apparent in the 80s and 90s, we have also experienced the big boom of the economy, shifting into late-capitalism, where mental illness is now more prevalent than ever before.
I think that what the internet calls "liminal spaces" should be called "discontextualized spaces". they are essentially places whose purpose existed but is lost, either due to abandonment, bad design, or partial recognizability.
Yes I agree. It has bugged me that the term liminal space was being applied to these images of disused or discarded spaces/objects. The traditional use of liminal space captures the idea that it anticipatory place, and what is on the other side could just as easily be positive/exciting/pleasurable as negative/horrific/melancholic. I also quite like the term uncanny valley for images of familiar yet disused and decrepit. It much better reflects that feeling of unease that is being evoked.
I actually clicked on the video thinking that it was about liminality in the anthropological sense, so I was puzzled as well by the examples and explanation presented.
*weird places
Or just 'abandoned spaces'
@@hueylong7989 not necessarily abandoned, just mismatched with the amount or kind of people who are there. If you saw a picture of a walmart parking lot at 2:00 am, crowded with people in suits, but no cars, it would have a similar effect to a mall without the crowd.
Architects: "Let's create spaces."
Also architects: *bothered by spaces*
Spaces just get in the way.
@BanquetOfTheLeviathan engineers ain't shit, it's the builders that make it work
@@arccv It takes a village. As long as everyone does their job and does it properly, it doesn't matter.
@BanquetOfTheLeviathan engineer response
@BanquetOfTheLeviathan I implore you to find a space made by an engineer alone vs a space designed by an architect and tell me which one is more pleasing to be in.
It seems that the current liminal trend focuses more on the feeling of kenopsia rather than actual liminality. The absence of activity doesn't necessarily make a space liminal but does produce a feeling of kenopsia, the feeling of emptiness produced by a space that is usually bustling with activity but is currently empty and quiet. Great video!
Good word! Thanks for sharing!
Very much so. I’d not call a Chuck E. Cheese liminal by any means, nor a classroom or the store part of a mall, though I suppose the arcade does qualify as it’s merely a means to get from store to store, but in the last year they have all been so empty and ghostlike. You almost expect tumbleweeds.
Absolutely. Liminal spaces are transitional, often anticipatory, spaces. What's on the other side could be positive or negative. I feel like liminal space needs to be reclaimed from the current usage that only applies a negative meaning to the space.
Kenopsia better describes common motives for noticing liminal space. As relationship motivated creatures, we humans are less interested in the liminality of a space than we are in the human connections we hope once were there. Modern architecture likes to leverage this desire for human connection by strategically placing human comforts like park benches or tables in liminal spaces to draw people through them. Often these places are underused and neglected because they are placed more to evoke kenopsia than to make a pleasant space to eat or talk with a friend. Garden magazines are filled with kenopsia evoking ornaments like cute benches and gazebos. Nostalgia is wonderful when remembering places we made connections, but what about places that may have never been used? When we prepare excess space for ourselves that never gets used, it feels like a tragedy. The manga "Blame!" showcases this tragedy with a never ending city that builds itself while seeking to destroy the humans that might otherwise inhabit the space. Instead of wise, excess quickly grows insidious.
@Kevin L Because the word predates their obsession. Liminal spaces were already a thing, and have very peculiar properties. For example, the strange tendency of people to pick liminal spaces to hold conversations, even though that's almost always disruptive. (stopping for conversation on stairways, in doorways, blocking hallways, etc). So the connection of liminality with absence of human activity is, uh, peculiar, since the exact opposite is the normal course of affairs. Liminal spaces form boundaries between places where activity takes place, but inexorably draw people to congregate. Fricken weird, but also hard to talk about if you use liminal space to mean an empty conference room. A thing it does not mean. Pick a different word.
Edit: not to say that an empty conference room cannot have the quality of liminality, in a metaphorical sense. But it isn't itself a liminal space. So I want to know what boundary is that space and time creating? Is it the transition between two events? Because certainly I've seen the peculiar attraction people have to congregating in a conference room between speakers, again, not empty, because people just won't stay away from liminal spaces. What I'm getting at is if you can't answer the question "what threshold is being (re)presented by this space" then it isn't liminal.
Something interesting Melbourne did in it's junk spaces is give artists permission to go ham. It turned empty alleyways and side streets into art galleries instead. It makes it feel less weird and impersonal.
This needs to be a worldwide movement tbh, there needs to be more art in the world.
Art can give places life and history to establish some trace of human context that a sterile space doesn't have
@@UNSCPILOT if every space in the world becomes artsy then the new "sterile" will be artsy areas. If everyone's super, no one really is.
@@joanboring26 well, ok, fair.
Utilitarian areas have their use and make a decent contrast, I just find things lean too heavily on the bland utility, I suppose what I mean to say is that it would be nice to have more of a balance of both.
I work in retail so I have a bit of a like/hate relationship with the "hyper utilitarian warehouse with checkouts" thing that most stores seem to have here and it's making me a bit biased
@@UNSCPILOT Aye, fair enough.
I have been working nights as a security guard for seven years. Thank you for finally giving me a word to accompany the feeling I get in temporary or permanently empty spaces where the lack of human beings jumps out at you. Kenopsia. Being someone who does not like being around crowds kenopsia is my favorite feeling. You don’t necessarily feel safe, but you don’t feel on edge.(or at least I don’t) It never gave me a feeling of being alone. This might sound a bit like BS, but I could always feel the presence of the people who used to be there. Like an afterimage leftover from looking at the sun.
The best thing about powerfully liminal spaces is that kenopsia happens even while people are still around. The “architectural and cultural hurr durr” is removed, magnifying anything that happens and making those memories more defined.
Only by minimising the everpresent can we truly appreciate the fleeting. You can’t remember the people and what you did with them, if your attention was forcibly taken by the wood, stone, brick and metal.
I'm sorry but the fact that you've been working nights as a security guard for the past 7 years and the fact that the Five Nights At Freddy's franchise is also 7 years old struck me as an odd coincindence
I used to love go out after midnight to get this feeling.
Nice final line, I get it.
I'm working as a janitor, so I can relate to that feeling. Been to lots of places that go from bustling to empty. And then I turn off the lights and walk away.
My god, I've had this feeling before. In the middle of summer when it's basically dead outside because everyone stays indoors. I get this unnerving feeling when moving to my seemingly abandoned neigbourhood. Despite the crazy sunshine weather. This makes sense now.
This reminds me of what it was like in the early weeks of lockdown. Pretty much everybody stayed at home, so the streets and shops were almost devoid of people, yet were still open. Kinda spooky.
To me, liminal spaces feel like when you glitch a camera in a game, and get to explore the areas of the map that the player was never suppose to see, the spaces that have no detail, placeholders for sections that were scrapped a long time before the game came out, that no-one remembered, nor cared, to delete
What you just described is specifically one of the major reasons why I feel like Forza Horizon 3 was more fun than any of the games in the franchise that came after it. There were just enough weird glitches you could exploit to go places you’re not supposed to be able to go, and explore really weird spaces and see how far you can go before you find the invisible line where the ground is no longer solid and you fall through the map. There was a way to trick the game into letting you drive underwater, unlocking vast lakebeds to reach high speeds on and access mountains you normally can’t. There was even a fence you could glitch through and access an empty lake with banked edges that looks like an abandoned old NASCAR track. Plus just the wild view of the inside of a mountain, the tops of skyscrapers you can creatively land on… it made exploring the map a challenge and it was great! The newer games got too good at preventing players from doing that, and I think it detracted from the fun a little bit.
I was immediately thinking of the video game "Control". A partly empty government facility which is a masterclass of brutalist architecture.
I was looking for this comment
Or Masterclass of capitalism... bloody remedy.
I instantly thought of Superliminal and The Stanley Parable. But sure, control too.
Actual brutalist buildings with those large hallways are weird when empty specially at night, it's creepy. It's so sterile and empty by themselves, even places that actually are used.
@@Tester-sh1mn Not sure if you're talking just about the game, but irl Communists were very fond of brutalism. Likely because they were cheapskates and then said it was the future or that their ideal Soviet Man was to be something a inhuman roboto, or whatever excuse they made not paint and make proper buildings. But it was very prominent in the URSS up until the 90s.
@@zekiz774 This
Abandoned areas of commerce and commute feel super comfy and empowering to me. Like I no longer have to fall in line with the crowd, I can explore, and act as I wish. Like having a sense of dominion.
Honestly, these uneasy spaces actually ease me quite a bit when I walk through them, the feeling of people supposed to be there yet not being there feels so reassuring. I feel like the entire space is mine and no one else exists, and its great.
I agree.
Privacy in pubic. I like to go for walks at night for the same reason.
Same.
Same. One of my very first jobs was at a mall, I always enjoyed the emptiness of the place after hours. As a stagehand/rigger today, I’m frequently working inside empty stadiums, theaters and other concert venues. They feel like completely different places with and without the people. One thing that I always found a bit creepy are theater “ghost lights”, the single light bulb on a stand that’s placed center stage when theaters go dark. Something about that solitary light in a vast, dark building always unnerves me. The empty hotel convention halls on corporate gigs can evoke strange feelings sometimes too.
Nicely described.
Liminal spaces are the graveyards of modernity. In modern western countries, a lot more places are non places and junk spaces.
It’s not just western countries. Chinese ghost towns or soviet Khrushchyovkas fall into those categories too
I have always gravitated towards pre-WWII architecture. I've always found architecture from the 1960s onward really depressing. Even as a kid.
There are specific architects who've made some interesting modern buildings or homes since, but it's _very_ hit or miss for me. The 70s and 80s were the worst.
I'm neutral on your pfp
@@Meladjusted The 70's-80's were a mixed bag. They brought about Earth homes, solar powered homes, better insulation etc. so there was some improvement structurally but aesthetically not so much. Personally I'm a fan of Victorian and Art Deco/Nouveau Architecture.
@@andreidanilov9925 Absolutely the post-soviet countries are riddled with abandoned architecture
I love the architectural explanation in this video but that anamatronic clip nearly gave me a heart atttack. Excellent blend of educational and terrifying 😅
That really was horrific. I'm still seeing it in my minds eye and fear my dreams tonight.
I looked away for a second, looked back expecting to see abandoned buildings and had the scare of my life.
can you give the timestamp of said clip?
@@hede638 1:51
As a security guard who works in a large office complex, I am used to seeing large empty spaces and halls fill up with people and become abandoned by nightfall. The feeling of being alone in a massive space that would otherwise in the day be heavily occupied is just amazing and surreal.
Omg so i am not wrong about how i used to feel in my school auditorium, it is neon green and i used feel this euphoric feeling in one particular corner ( left ) of the space i felt small and insignificant and how huge the space was through the eyes pf a kindergarten kid.
So this is something the movie the "Langolears" took advantage of. So called junk space is suposed to be filled with passing people, the movie took place at an airport but everyone was gone or missing and the entire movie has an eerie or creepy feel to it because thse big open normally bustling places were empty, there were no people to fill the space that it was built for. To me it invokes a sence of foreboding and isolation when I see these pictures of places that are suposed to be filled with things and people, people being the thing they were filled with the most of.
HAHAHA YOU MEAN THAT ONE WITH THE FLYING 🍑🍑🍑???? HAHAHAHAHA
'Langoliers' was definitely Stephen King evoking the modern concept of liminal space (and using it as a plot point in fact) decades before its time. It's quite an interesting thing.
I especially like the end of the story, when they arrive to another version of the airport that also appears abandoned - the way that's resolved represents really well the dual meaning of 'liminal space' - on the one hand uncanny, unsettling, but on the other hand anticipatory, acting as a threshold.
I'm pretty neutral when it come to your pfp
@@KillahMate the fact that the characters being out of step with the flow of time was also a key plot point evokes liminality too - an effect of this that the characters felt besides just being alone in what should be a bustling airport was that there was a pervasive staleness. stale air, stale food in vending machines and food courts, etc. it sounds a lot like his way of reframing exhaustion with these places.
You just unlocked a memory from my childhood. I vaguely remembet some fleeting scenes from that movie
This is a fantastic video, but can we pause a moment to talk about how Marc Auge puts books in his bookshelf at 3:43?
LOL!!!!
...the monster
the books are certainly in the bookshelf
My deepest connections with "Liminal Spaces" is in dreams.
That’s interesting. Would you please share one? It’s probably more interesting than real life. 🌟
Yeah i have lots of dreams where I'm trapped in some kind of liminal space, most often weird, completely fictitious rooms in my own house that confuse me profoundly
@@spencerricketts8025 i bet that make a good short story. I know I’d read it.
Makes sense. The most awe-inspiring, and horrifying liminal space I’ve ever been in because of a dream was a massive, underground, multi-level concrete tunnel system. I would say that it was somewhere between a parking garage and a highway in a tunnel, on a scale similar to the Cheyenne Mountain Complex or the underground storm tunnels in Japan. There were ramps that were all separated from each other, and it was dimly lit with cool green light, and it was massive- four layers deep. I was a passenger in the family car, which meant there was a juxtaposition between the warm car interior and the novelty of the strange, swallowing structure I was in. You could only go 20mph before needing to turn a tight corner at the end of the long slope, and the kicker was that the ramps only went down. If you wanted to go back up, you had to drive into one of any series of car-sized elevators that only went up to a specific level (several elevators that only went up one level, several that only went up 2, etc.). So far, that’s been my favorite dreamscape liminal space, because it was both an exercise in admiring what people could build, given enough time and resources, and an exercise in complaining about how stupid it was for an infrastructure system to rely solely on elevators for back-to-surface transport, because “what if an emergency happened, these elevators are so stupidly designed.”
@@andreabutitsruth I love this! What would Jung say…❤️
There is a tourist attraction in WI called house on the rock which is both a non place and a liminal space. Part of it was built to resemble A frank lloyd Wright structure but it fails so spectacularly and is so unimaginable as a dwelling… it makes me very uncomfortable but I also LOVE the feeling it gives you. Time is weird there.
I’ve always wanted to go seems surreal
Seeing this video I came to think about an anecdote, which I know to be true (maybe with the exception of actual word phrasing and word order). It’s about the Danish architect/city planer Jan Gehl. When he was young in the 1960’s he met his wife to be who faced him with this pivotal question: “why is it that all you idealist architects, rise at 03.30 in the morning to walk out into the city and take photos of buildings at sunrise. Hereby making sure that the photos are not contaminated by people? Shouldn’t buildings and architecture be made for people? and therefore shown with people? “
The script for this video was so delightful. I love the academic perspective you bring to architecture. Reminds me of the joys of being in college and learning new things every day. Thank you for sharing this!
Glad you enjoyed it!
I've watched way too many TH-cam videos in my life, but this is one of the best ones I've ever seen. Love it!
That is an amazing compliment. Thank you!
Hey i know you i watched one of your planet coaster video once
I’m all excited to see Silvarret here - I love his videos, so interesting and relaxing at the same time. Now I’m even more excited to watch this.
me too
Personally disagreeing
Been researching this lately. The video couldn't be out at a better time. Thank you!!
Glad you enjoy it!!
I really like your channel's design!
You said something very interesting no one else said: we either don’t need them or these places don’t need us.
I love that you're taking a more "academic" approach to explaining liminal spaces.
It's a feeling of something missing, and staring at a world you once that no longer exist. Both sensations are out of place when you are living in reality that only goes forword and not back.
I am no architect.. but good architecture is something like attention to detail. A fluted column is attractive because it is fluted, it doesn't need to be fluted, but that detail is what makes it attractive. Neo-gothic... now that's something to behold!
Some of us like liminal spaces. Spend a couple of minutes in a deserted corner next to an escalator in an airport. Experience the quiet of an oasis in the midst of the human Mass. It's revelatory.
This! I only get a feeling of giddiness when thinking about liminal spaces. Not much negativity. I guess being an extreme introvert is a vastly different human experience than others'.
Just taking back and listening to the hum of the world is Interesting
It reminds me of 'articulated space" a term coined by Herman Hertzberger, where he would articulated the geometry of a larger hall (such as school hall) to achieve series of compartmentalized social space, it is one way to address the unfamiliarity through manipulation of scale and proportion.
Your description of said "liminal" spaces or non-spaces as the uncanny valley of architectural places makes absolute sense. That's why they have this eerie feeling to them, and why some of the more powerful images of said "liminal" spaces can feel so haunting despite literally having nothing that could trigger said feelings, nothing that triggers the fear response, and yet it triggers as much.
On a long drive through france I stayed at a city for an overnight stop. It was huge with many streets but completely deserted apart from a few parked cars. They had one hospital building fully manned surrounded by 3 or 4 new but deserted office buildings. The whole thing felt like the layout of an industrial estate; no residential buildings, no coffee shops, just a grid filled with offices and grass between them.
The hotel we stayed in seemed to be a converted office block too, it was really huge for a 3 bed hotel room, however it did not fill the space with anything, just had a massive stretch of floor In-between beds. It was a corner room and the two walls facing out were both 100% window with these wierd circular support pillars on the inside of the room. When you drew the curtains the room looked very strange, It was too big for the room really, and stopped you from seeing two of the four walls, instead it was just this dark curtain filling most of your view
I am a poor writer so i am not doing it justice, its fair to say though that this is the weirdest place i have been.
I’m really curious to find out more about this city, do you remember where it was or some other details? Thanks :)
This makes me feel kind of bad because I find these Terrain Vague "non-places" beautiful. I spent a lot of my childhood on planes so I always felt a comfort from airports that nobody seems to share. (At least got I old enough to know how awful TSA got)
A lot of the strange, unintuitive interior designs I see as examples come from long periods of overlapping remodelling efforts. In highschool (about 20 years ago) I worked maintenance in a gigantic mall built early '80s. It was full of what would now be termed liminal spaces; things like odd staircases, lobbies without entrances, pointless alcoves, ramps to nowhere, long featureless corridors etc. Some of it was natural to the original era and design aesthetic, but most was the result of haphazard and ill considered renovation over the decades as areas were repurposed and tenants moved in and out -- or perhaps simply done as cheaply as possible, leaving odd remnants of previously viable areas and features behind and inadvertently creating odd, unconventional and basically useless new ones.
These unintentional new areas/features would be finished off and relatively matching to their surroundings, so they'd look simultaneously belonging and out of place. The sort of thing you'd look at and wonder why they'd ever design X area in such a way, but usually just not quite absurd enough to be obvious byproducts of renovation ie; walling over old entrances, or extending one tenant's floorspace such that it would block a previously wide open corridor, and so on.
That all being said, a lot of examples are also just plain questionable or mediocre modernist design, or its side-branch of brutalism. These tend to create, as the video noted, a lot of highly unnatural, unornamented structures that are at once bland and forbidding if not outright hostile. Brutalist designs particularly tend to create unease... but I've gone on too long already.
... anyone that's played the Half Life games is familiar with this concept.
or "The Stanley Parable" another Source Engine game.
Source engine in general is mainly what drives my interest in the whole liminal space aesthetic.
@@jstn9914 yeah the source engine is amazingly off, it doesnt feel like just another game engine, nor a depiction of real life. It's atmosphere feels so good as it brings out how devoid of people it is. Empty garry's mod servers, alone on tf2's maps just exploring, portal's test chambers when glados isnt talking, and half life 2's maps empty and with sound design so amazing you feel as if its real and completely devoid of life other than you and this alien threat.
I'm so glad I've found your channel!! I've had to take a break from architecture school due to mental health issues relating to the pandemic and I'm so happy to have bite-sized yet thoughtful video content like this to explore right now :) Good video!
Thank you for sharing.
I'm just in absolute shock that I found this amazing video. I've been so invested in thinking about liminal spaces and why we feel that way about them and how to avoid them when designing a building, and this video is nothing short of perfection on this topic that deserves a prize in my opinion. I'm so glad I discovered this gem of a channel, thank you for your profound research. Your videos really do help everyone from professionals to students to just enthusiasts.
It's really fascinating to me how some of the fundamental aspects of Surrealism are being reinvigorated with the term liminal. Huge empty buildings at 3am with giant, menacing (and often purposely geometrically incorrect) shadows and general uncomfort.
I really recommend anyone into the Liminal aesthetic to look at the art of Dalí, Giorgio de Chirico, Rene Magritte etc.
I have no idea why the algorithm thought I would want to watch this, but thank you. I now understand why all of my Minecraft builds feel so unsatisfying.
Really interesting piece; especially the comparison to the "uncanny valley" idea. Very nice video essay, I look forward to seeing more of your work.
*_non places on the other hand are spaces for anonymous transactions and where everyone feels lonely even when surrounded by crowds_*
having lived in Chinese cities for more than a decade, this is how I feel most of the time. It is even worse, because you feel separated as a foreigner. Great video, surprised you don't have more subs.
Hypermodernism is another useful term which is more associated with philosophy than architecture, but pertains to the same phenomena. It's self referential and stands in contrast from anything romantic or sentimental, its modern, conscious of itself and the past yet simultaneously disconnected from both. Think form devoid of meaning and you have a liminal space. There's a similar phenomenon going on within artistic/aesthetic movements on the internet, vaporwave, hypnagogic pop, hyperpop, glitchcore, post-internet, all riffing off the same unique blend of nostalgia or familiarity that you cant quite place.
What a great video! Not so related to liminal spaces, but I loved it at 7:59 when you said the photographer "scripts their engagement" to his pictures. That's a really great way to talk about how an artist plans an exhibit and make me realize the mediums where stuff is displayed is really important
I never realized this before since I've known about this "phenomina", but the Matrix movies used this a lot. And it makes sense if the world they're in is indeed false. Hell, Zion even feels that way. Giving the feeling maybe THAT isn't even real to some viewers. If it's intentional, it was a genius implement.
So instead of looking, we were looking at looking.
My respects to your moustache sir.
I enjoyed this video. Thank you.
I remember as a kid walking through these modernist spaces felt rather empowering, like I was on a journey walking into the future. They were such a contrast to my cookie cutter SoCal suburb. I don’t get such a simple reaction from them anymore, but walking around in the guts of something like a performance center/stadium still energizes me thinking of the people who’ve also shared the space.
The problem though is that the future eventually has to arrive.
This is unsettling but informative. Terrain vague is my new favorite word. A failed attempt at dressing up commercial space with an imitation of nature. Truly uncanny.
This was so informative and captivating. It's fascinating to hear someone put into words a feeling that I've often experienced but couldn't articulate. Looking forward to learning more from you. But for now, I'm off to listen to some mallsoft and get some work done on a muggy Friday afternoon. Cheers!
Shane, that’s exactly how I felt about this video, too. I noticed, and had an impression about these spaces, but couldn’t articulate my impressions.
After looking up the term, I now realize that “liminality” is always all around us in terms of physical, societal, cultural, positional, and relational existence. This video really was a (minds) eye-opener 👍
Fantastic video essay - you have somehow articulated a plethora of thoughts and emotions I have been unable to describe for the last 6 months browsing reddits liminal spaces.
A real gift - Subscribed and looking forward to more!
The psychology of liminal spaces, the “uncanny,” actually reminds me very much about the psychology of human attraction and bonding. Something/someone that is just familiar enough but not familiar enough to cause discomfort…you want to look away but you cannot.
I was in Guam for 2 months during the height of the pandemic. This video put words to how the built spaces there made me feel. Hotels, resorts, and clubs were mostly empty, with an 80s/90s design. Familiar, but uncomfortable and alienating. Guam is a place in transition on multiple levels, thanks for giving me a new way to describe it.
Would love to see you discuss "the backrooms"' a real weird liminal space, or non-context spaces used to evoke horror. theres alot of different takes on them but they are facinating
I instantly stuck to the mentioning of the "uncanny valley of architecture."
Growing up in detroit as a homeless kid, I used to sit around inside abandoned stations and factories and draw them all day long. The areas of the city where suddenly there are absolutely no buildings or houses in the gridded streets, though the streets still remain. Sometimes the burnt husk of a house, or a childrens swingset awkwardly peeks from behind the tall grass. All malls and most commercial areas are all abandoned there, and I find immense comfort in those spaces. But those spaces were areas I knew no one else would be, so I always felt safe in them, and still do whenever I find one in my current city - though nowadays I don't need them for that safety anymore.
just found your channel--I love the way you discuss topics like these. You make them accessible without watering them down, and they're helping me re-spark my interest in architecture!
Glad you like them!
Sometimes I think most of modern design tries to give that feeling of being nowhere. Since design needed to be innovative more than beautiful, it could never arrive or give a feeling of comfort and safety, because that would mean conservative or stagnant. Design started out with endless moving forward with progressive ideas, but soon it was commercialized as an endless need for new products. A new loop started: it created a feeling of being lost and then started to express that feeling of being lost with an esthetic of being lost, reinforcing the feeling and then expressing it etcetera. The beat in music became cold and repetitive. Whole cities and living environments are now constructed in this homeless esthetic, unpleasant and based on an illusion of progression, instead of peace and gratitude. The best things that give peace are old and completely reverse the modernist ideology. When you walk into a 19th century building or an 17th century church or an 18th century Japanese temple you feel immediately relieved from the pressure of pointless progression. Another thing is nature. Of course they are similar: old buildings often have organic forms and ornaments that look like flowers and leaves. Progression in classical ornament is measured in how much joy and gratitude it gives. But nowadays happiness is feared, only the pursuit of happiness is respected, an endless pursuit.
pretty good expression of my doubts about the conventional architecture of the 20th and 21st century. Another component is utilitarianism. Other visions of architecture were attempting, utopian villages drawing from the round troglodyte house rather than the basic cube, but in my experience, architects and architecture students tend to regard those things as frivolous: lacking in practicality.
Such criticisms aren't necessarily unfounded: Gaudi's apartments are suited exclusively to a wealthy upper class that can afford to have all its furniture custom made.
So the form of utopian architecture that was put on a pedestal, imitated and emptied of its substance was the one that lends itself to industrial techniques of mass production. cubes of glass and concrete - concessions were made to improve its comfort and usability - while gradually erasing the utopianism that made brutalism admirable, but without questioning the central conceit of usability above all else . The issue is that we are not utilitarian animals: we are messy and emotional and practicality while important is not all that matters to us.
But while we are not utilitarian, capitalism is: using anything but steel, and concrete is needlessly costly when massive economies of scale have been achieved with these materials. Wasting space is unthinkable when cities are saturated. As a result contemporary architect struggle to find space for humans to inhabit in a productivist framework they can rarely, if ever, escape.
As a result we have an architecture that is unobtrusively authoritarian, because how can mass production be elitist? The gold and ostentation has been hidden inside exclusive private places while glass gives an air of accessibility to financial institutions. and the quasi socialism of brutalist apartment projects? they've been sanded down along the concrete, which has been made to look like marble.
As for liminal spaces, (edit: in this case, I mean the semi hostile points of passage that are often carved out of the residual spaces between the locations that had actual thought and care put into them) they are the demonstration that the practicality of modern architecture might be more suited for the flow of production and money rather than for actual people.
One of the most thought provoking comments I have read on YT.
Thank you for sharing your view. As a design student from a college with bauhaus history, this really resonates with me.
To me incorporating natural elements in the things we create shows a form of understanding where we come from, it's a direct connection to the resources of life, and also their beauty. This usually gives a feeling of universal comfort and can tell you a lot about a culture, from small objects to the architecture of entire settlements.
Modern design on the other hand seems like a blank slate to me, it gives you nothing and tells you nothing - except that it functions. As soon as something modernist looses it's function, it looses it's value. It works great for technology, when the form and look have to adapt to new inventions and ideas, but entire environments that tell me nothing and give me less character than a gray suit or a prison cell just give me a feeling of disorientation and having no real purpose.
I think that this all definately has a societal impact, since as humans we also build ther world we live in and live by.
@@MewMewYu1 I was interested in the idea of ''ruin value'' (Ruinenwert) but when I talked about that I was connected with right wing politics and conservatism, because it was an idea of Nazi architect Albert Speer. And any time I criticize the alienating aspects of modernism, the easiest attack always is that you are conservative, while actually I am a left wing progressive. However, it could very well be that in a world that feels alien, people become right wing and conservative to create a world that is less ''liminal.'' Nationalism is one way to create a home and feel safe, but I hate that. I want art and design to ''disturb the comfortable and to comfort the disturbed''. I just think that the second part, to comfort the disturbed, should be very important. To convince my fellow progressives that their esthetic is not helping their social ideals, just pointing this out doesn't seem to work. They keep building things that people hate and they are very proud of that. Maybe it can be connected to ecology and circularity: you want repair an old house or and old vase because it is beautiful, but a modern thing you throw away easily. In architecture sometimes buildings are designed ''circular'' in the sense that they are so anonymous that they can be used in many different ways, as offices or houses. But the result is the opposite because people only want to preserve something beautiful, something that has a specific identity. For instance I know a church converted to apartments. Very hard to do, but people do it because the building is worth preserving. In ecology conservatism is anyway more easily seen as progressive (local production, preserve forests etcetera).
@@pietervoogt Hiya, there; I know _exactly_ what you mean, when arguing about the ugliness of modern architecture, and being called "reactionary" for it. (I kinda chalk that one up to some people wanting "progressive" to be an exclusive club for the "cool people," but that's a whole 'nother kettle of fish.) Don't let it get you down, my friend.
Can I give you a bit of advice, though? About the whole "art & design should disturb the comfortable, and to comfort the disturbed" thing... It may sound noble, but that sentiment leads to a dead-end, in both disciplines. As someone who designs/installs products for a living, then goes home to draw/paint pictures as a way to relax, there are three lessons I've learned.
1) Don't think about "your audience"-- consider the user, if you're a designer; or viewer, if you're an artist; or reader, if you're an author, or listener, if you're a musician. Crowds come-'n-go, but it's the individual that remembers.
2) Don't make assumptions about that individual. You might think you know them, but you really don't.
3) Don't try to impress them, scold them, scare them, or seduce them. Just tell them the truth of how it was for you.
Anyways, that's all I got. All the best, my friend.
"It's Junk"
YES, that's part of the point, but anyways, i opened this video for inspiration into how to design levels into my game because that kind of unsettling feeling is precisely what I need and want.
I think in video-games the feeling would depend on more than just the location but also the type of gameplay. A frenetic shooter with high movement speed and easy to follow markers for goals will rob most of the creepiness of whatever the place it is set in.
The player needs to be moved to "stop and smell the roses" or in this case "look around and dread the eerie"
@@BlueSun_ lucky that i'm doing a horror game, then ;)
@@MidnightSt
Remedy's _CONTROL_ is a must-play for you then.
The main character of this GOTY-nomination is The Oldest House, the game's setting.
@@kjj26k already playing it, but thanks
@@MidnightSt
Have fun!
I've seen other liminal spaces videos but this one actually talks about some artists that create a similar feel and explains what features can make a modern liminal space excellent video rightfully deserving a subscription keep it up 👏👏
I’m a spatial planning student from the Netherlands, very glad I discovered this channel. Your content and videos are great!
Glad you found it too! Welcome!
Hi Stewart. I'm kurt neiswender urban colab is my small practice in flint Michigan. I'm so glad the algorithm lord decided to populate my feed with your videos. I just subscribed. Thanks for sharing. I also teach at ltu and have a passion to share about architecture 🤘
Thank you! Glad to meet you!
I've always found Edward Hoppers paintings examples of liminal spaces. Even when there are human subjects it feels like they exist in a vacuum but believable and familiar world.
Post-lockdown, Liminal Space in Art plucked at Nostalgia, and a subconscious promise you never made to yourself. It's an empty hallway, or the fascade of a building that you walked past every day, but never really desired anything further. The road not traveled. Lockdown made some people (Let's say Extroverts) feel trapped, a part of their freedom taken away. Picking at a psychic scar that was never there. (Introverts just put on Netflicks, and chilled with a pint of ice cream.) It makes you think, "You know, I could have gone down that hallway," even knowing that down that hallway is probably just another hallway. Another fascade, another building... The feeling that somewhere, out there is a space as empty on the outside as we feel our lives have become inside. It's basically an illusion, an allusion to the "Good old days" we never had.
Love your work! Keep doing it what you are doing it’s so good!
I really appreciate professors that share their knowledge outside the classroom, given that most of us spend more time on social media and the internet than studying at university
This is a good video essay. And by that, I mean beyond the bounds of simply architectural reference. There is a philosophy of "the third space" nearly touched on here, and it explores a striking phobia we all share yet don't understand well enough to label. Its a video that triggers the muse of inspiration.
What’s the third space?
@@johannypaulino2953 there are a few theory and ideas behind the term "third space" or "third place. I use the idea as presented by Ray Oldenburg, that the 1st place is your home, the 2nd place your work, and the third is, in effect, communal gathering places, such as a mall, library, etc. The reduction of so many third spaces nowadays is highly detrimental to our overall individual and community well being. Here is a link to a short video made by Ray:
th-cam.com/video/hd1_jNIn-qw/w-d-xo.html
@@Colorcrayons thank you. That’s fascinating. Have a nice weekend! ❤️
The 1 dislike is a butthurt architect of a Chuck E. Cheese
They don't really have architects, they have franchise equipment and whatever prefab building a construction company threw together. Even money on the latter being a Chinese restaurant, more traditional pizzeria, or an other place that serves food without specific installations.
Or maybe someone that can see through this collegiate BS.
@@vipermad358 i bet you don't vaccinate your kids
@Kevin L …very well observed and stated (in my humble opinion) 👍
@Kevin L THAT IS THE POINT DUHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH
A Scott McCloud reference means i'm compelled to give this video a like now, the guys books don't get the appreciation they deserve to design in general, they're amazing!
That's an equation I can support.
Wow, thank you for this! I am a Dutch artist who often explored the thing I felt about the world I lived in but couldn't quite put my finger on it! This video really helps me!
I love the term "non-space".
"Uncanny valley of architecture" is brilliant!
This went way deeper than I expected, thanks!
Congrats Stewart, you’re doing an excellent job. Very accurate and informative.
9:21 Lol this is what my CAD generated spaces look like currently as a first year studying architecture
Video games are also creating liminal spaces in a digital format. I wonder if any game creators use the unease created by liminal spaces intentionally to ramp up anxiety for games that run in the horror genres, like zombie apocalypse . . .
The game Control made me feel that way, a lot. Firstly, much of it is inside an office building which all looks incredibly similar. It activates the part of my brain that says "this is all generic, pay attention to where you're headed and going". Secondly, the layout of the maps shifts constantly. So all of my "pay attention because there aren't landmarks" goes out the window.
I could only play for a few hours before my brain got exhausted from it all. It might not be quite what you're describing, but I was extremely uneasy throughout
@@dfunited1
All of this makes the part where The Oldest House finally works _with_ you so empowering.
YES!!! Make MORE of this!
I come away from your videos more enlightened, but also with a sense of personal validation of my own observations and impressions of certain spaces and designs. I just didn’t have the ‘vocabulary’ to describe or characterize my impressions of these spaces. You’ve made me smarter, confident, and more adept at my abilities of critical analysis.
My hobbies include photography, residential remodeling & carpentry, landscaping, and woodworking.
Wow, that's great! Thank you for the kind words and glad you're enjoying the videos.
The amount of references you made in this video is just amazing , i had to write them down for research purposes.
Your content should be shown by all Architectural colleges :)
3:41 Before you mentioned that he coined the term, I thought you wanted to make clear that Marc Auge is not a place
That is also true.
There's a whole painting school of empty interiors from scandinavia in the late 19th century. They have th same eerie ambience.
Interesting, tell me more!
Would love to know the name of this school or some artists, google is failing me
@@kismet1656 Vilhelm Hammershøi is one but there are many lesser known painters.
I find all these pictures of liminal spaces soothing. I now realize that most of my dreams take place in liminal spaces and I'd like to live in a home full of them
I've been working security at a mostly empty work campus that used to be for thousands of people and this video explains the feeling of the whole place so well
I have seen many videos about liminal spaces and so far this is one of the best. I like how you talked about the ways that artists create liminal spaces too. I really wish I knew how to use Blender so I could create some realistic liminal spaces on my computer. Time to watch some tutorials.
Just wanted to add to the Scott McCloud thing, how simple cartoons are more relatable, (anthropomorphic) non humans also seem to be more relatable than humans. Apparently Chuck Jones(a famous animator?) once said, “it is easier and more believable to humanize animals than it is to humanize humans.”. A lack of information creates projection and percieved depth? Idk
„They don’t need us anymore“ brilliant
These are well thought out, I appreciate the depth of information you've put into it.
For me, "Liminal" spaces seem almost like if a place had a dissociative disorder. I say so mainly because dissociation is exactly what they invoke in me. And under dissociation, even regular spaces become "Liminal".
This is excellent and helps me with my argument against hyper-realustic sculpture, which I believe only emphasizes its unreality as it closes in on realism. This us why I use heavy texture in my sculpture. I have thought of texture as serving the same cognitive effect as an intervening atmosphere between sculpture and viewer. Thanks.
John
The brief description of the essay's style of writing sounded to me like Borges y yo from Jorge Luis Borges, awesome video, thanks for the contant
I love Borges!
Finally a channel that tackles relevant contemporary issues of architecture! +1 sub
Glad to have you!
Also basically jails. One more reason why too often people come out worse than they go in.
I want to press the 'like' a few more times
- South African architecture student
This is one of the most relevant yet informative videos I have ever watched. Thank you so much for this wonderful content!
The density and the pace of information is incredible! Bravo :)
Pretty much every interior set in the movie 2001 a space odyssey makes use of this effect, further cementing the genius of Stanley Kubrick IMO…
Stellar content once again!
Questions: Are Liminal Spaces the final form of Architecture? How can designers keep themselves from designing accidental liminal spaces?
Hmm, that's a tough one. I don't think liminal spaces are definitely something to be avoided at all costs. I think its just important to be aware of how spaces which lack identity seem so scary/sad when they're empty...
Imagine designing a Holocaust memorial or museum and you'll realize how useful liminal spaces are to conveying those intentions.
Great shout out to McCloud's book. Love that book, his stuff about symbolism and art and how are brains/imaginations fill in the empty spaces between things etc. is amazing.
This was really good. We did a stadium project in Ottawa with a wood veil,where we used the idea of the Liminal space as an in between the veil and the stands. We felt that the Liminal space should be celebrated and not just a transition
Thanks again for posting this video
But is it still liminal then? 🤔
as a european i have absolutely no emotional reaction when looking at those pictures.
there are however simular pictures that definitely evoke an emotional reaction in more european settings
I've just noticed how much of the impact in the corridor scene from The Shining comes from how well it's portrayed as a liminal space.
This channel deserves to blow up
This is such an interesting take on the subject matter. Liminal spaces fascinate me, but I've never thought about the history behind them. I think that most liminal spaces are unnerving because most of them depict the same scene. After the industrial revolution, so many new spaces were built- but like you said, these new spaces lacked specifics. They all have a cold, universal look. Like a hospital, for instance. We all know what such a space looks like. If you took a photo of any random hospital hallway, any one could recognize what it is. With malls, airports, and offices built with such uniformity, it is likely that most people have a generated conception of these spaces. When we see a shot of one, we know its familiar but we don't know why, and this makes us uneasy. When looking at liminal spaces going forward, I'm going to play closer attention to the architecture. I'd bet good money these images new capture something specific of local. I'll bet all of them are set somewhere built in the mid to late 1900s, in a junk space!
Some people do worry about the strangest things.
Hoog Catherijne in Utrecht is a shopping mall that's basically one big liminal space. The painful part about it is that it's brand new. Most of its surface is entirely pointless.
I had to think immediately of Hoog Catherijne! It’s so big and so… pointless with boring yellow/white light and no colours at all
I like the analogy of the uncanny valley to liminal space. There's a sort of heightened awareness or intrigue evoked by both that deserves more scrutiny.
I wondered why I always feel uneasy around modern architecture, and why you rarely see a lot of people hanging out in front of modern architecture outside of some college buildings. Now I know, architects have been trained to design buildings that make people uncomfortable. The buildings are designed to either go in, get what you need, then leave quickly, or to simply drive past at speed in your automobile, but never walk around the building to admire it, unless you are depressed.