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

manipulating reality

KA. It's increasingly become apparent that creating Liminopia is impacted and influenced by its greater environment, namely the studio in which it resides. These images are attempts to alleviate those outward distractions, in order to play with and explore ideas that are at the moment, only visible in the imagination. A bit of photographic intervention has been used to create an illusion of 'sky', giving forth the possibility of Liminopia being an actual environment in and of itself. While manufactured and manipulated, it's interesting to see and consider how these photographic interventions can open up new ideas and create different contexts.

Covering the surface

Conversation 1

SS. The current work in progress on Liminopia has sites of development which are gradually creating further developments radiating out from the initial buildings into larger sites of urban activity. Gaps are filling in and the landscape is being covered, however some areas are already creating zones at which the adjacent areas are difficult to build on. One of the major areas at which this condition exists is the industrial zone with a factory and its associated toxic environment. Although one of the early developments the adjacent land remains unused and it might be suggested that our usual discomfort at being near such developments in the real urban world is being replicated in our imagined world of Liminopia. In what is a our own controlled world of Liminopia why do we still replicate these sites of alienation and how might we respond to mediate this area and how might this process in Liminopia be tranferred to ideas responding positively to the redevelopment and re-engagement of such zones in our own real city of London?

planning permission requested