From the Ruins of Liminopia

Liminopia was a fantasy, a model urban landscape free from constraints of scale constructed of random materials found by chance. It was a series of spatial contradictions, emanating from the Travellers Box which in this incarnation, turned upside down, issued forth from a hilltop an expanding city from the imaginations of the three artist/architects. The dialogues between the architects of this city came more through the internal preconceptions of urban planning, architecture, landscape and the material structure of the urban environment. We embarked on the project with notions of collaboration through conversation, dialogue, dissent and negotiation to construct a city of our choosing only to find that the preconceptions controlled and led us to construct from almost subconscious dialogue with the found materials. Ultimately despite the measured placings of each of the sites that made up the city in its entirety Liminopia in many ways made itself, perhaps less so for the other two architects but for me represents the life of a city which pervades our consciousness, suggests behaviours and subtly subverts and alters our own wishes for the immediate world around us. We are directed not only by our own motivations and the agendas of those who have more power over our cities, and therefore us, but also by our urban world which absorbs all the differing agendas, assumptions, hopes and wishes of its inhabitants and emits these back again in silent and unseen combinations.


Liminopia never had a history, it's (assumed) inhabitants never spoke, it never created an infrastructure that we recognise in our real cities that would enable it to live. Now that it is demolished and its heart, the Travellers Box, has moved on to its next incarnation, we can begin to discuss and decipher the ideas it suggests to us back in the real world. The documentation of its existence can now be created, interpreted and used to create a dialogue and conversation between the three architects to determine what this process of collaboration but also perhaps a wider understanding of the urban environment we share means to us and our fellow city dwellers. SS

a well earned beer

steve, helene & karen relaxing after the final shoot

the marks of time

as we begin to dismantle the mini metropolis that has become such a part of our lives, and, quite frankly, has dominated the studio for the past 6 months, and send the box on it's way to focAR group, it's time to reflect a bit. for me, one of the most interesting things about this collaboration has been the organic way it has unfolded and the parallels with building structures in the real world. unforeseen problems arise and decisions have to be taken. for instance, there was a time in the beginning where i really felt attached to the idea of protecting the structures from outside elements. the first heavy rain put paid to that and gave some areas of our 'city' a battering. we took the decision to leave the marks rather than make it pristine and it felt quite natural to do that. after all, when one builds a structure in the real world, it does rain and things get wet. admittedly, in the real world, damage would be addressed, but in our case, we felt the marks left represented traces of time elapsing and of the reality of dealing with the elements, even in our fantasy metropolis.

aerial shot before the rain

 aerial shot after the rain...

another interesting thing is the notion of scale. in the real world, scale, measurements and balance, both aesthetically and practically, are rather important. and those things were important to us, at least we assumed this in the beginning. but when it came to creating this space, the notion of scale went right out the window, and, it has to be said, rather quickly. the choice to use found materials dictated the scale, or lack of, and i think that added an element of sheer fantasy and impossibility that was in keeping with the idea of 'liminopia'. --ka