The Shifting Concept

Abstract

"The mind is insatiable for meaning, drawn from, or projected, into the world of appearances, for unearthing hidden analogies, which connect the unknown with the familiar, and show the familiar in an unexpected light."

The perception of these elements changes when appropriating parts of an existing site into a new design. In the Shifting Concept, columns which were only structural, and voids which had no meaning are given identities, from which a story unfolds.

The columns provide 2 axes, the horizontal and longitudinal, complemented by the perpendicular axis which the void presents. These axes become the definition of circulation.

The circular shape of the void is ideal for it relates to uncertainty, the unknown. It will be pure functionally. Hence light and shadow plays a significant role in the ritual, where it starts in light, a public area and ends up in darkness, the inaccessible.

Once the footprint of the intervention has been established, it is free to unleash itself as it grows upwards, a shift with the perpendicular as a pivot point is triggered. However the existing context imposes restraints and the body can only shift so much, the top of the intervention is the crown which terminates the story.

Spatially, the shifting concept is incorporated in every area. Spaces can be read as part of the holistic shift, as well as having their own shifting identity. they are always in a dialogue with adjacent spaces, or become a memory of encountered spaces.