Hidden Room Harvard Graduate School of Design, Adviser Jennifer Bonner Fall 2016
The whole scheme is an exercise in misdirection and obfuscation, challenging one to navigate the space to look past the perceived hidden rooms and experience the true. I sought to start developing spaces from the plan of growth and change paradigm from the macro scale, as well as the labyrinth paradigm for the micro, using the golden ratio as a template and then quickly removing it to let a natural scheme develop outside of any predefined organizational system. From this rooms naturally organized themselves as an outgrowth from the ground plane.
“In this second project, architecture occupies the space between subjective perception and objective reality. Through this hypothesis, this project focuses on the relationship between the visual, experiential, and conceptual bases of architecture – the paired associations of the exterior and the interior, the conspicuous and the inconspicuous, the visual and physical, and access and control. As an extension of the first project, it also elicits the act of interpretation and requires attention to the processes by which an idea is given three-dimensional form and represented in architectural drawings and models. ”
Subdued, yet complex in perception, rooms are obfuscated from multiple scales, allowing one to explore where the hidden room is ACTUALLY located. Upon approach, one actually perceives three spaces of varying heights when in fact (1) room is buried, hidden from view. This is the first instance of misdirection within the complex and is not considered the true hidden room. At this point one can descend down the main entrance or take a shortcut on 1 of 4 stairways down to the lower floor and perceive the true hidden space, unaccessible from this level. At this point one can simply give up, retreat back up the stairs and out, thinking that this space is unaccessible. Or depending on which path is taken further into the complex one can navigate the spaces below the surface through many instances of shifting walls that coercively shift attention away from (1) of 2 access points to the true hidden room, seen from above, located further underground by narrow passage. Taking cues from Sir John Soane to delineate space, action is taken, through the incorporation of the shifting walls, to reveal new conditions, funnel, and confuse expectations by playing with appearances. Each experience is new every time a wall shifts, new functions reveal themselves and perception is challenged; in this way many additional faux hidden rooms are revealed, but light, permeating the space by echoing the shifting wall conditions, clue one into the actual centers of the spaces as opposed to the perceived centers.
Finally if one can navigate to the hidden sliding panels located to the east and west in rooms 2 & 4, one can meander through 1 of 2 narrow corridors, led by an oculus of light that was once visible from the surface. This is the actual hidden room, ever so slightly shifted off axis like the other conditions, defying its true orientation.