Village 23

The Narrows is focused on two main narratives that I had to design around: One is a meditation space, and the other is water. What you see in the model is just a small piece of a much larger maze that makes up the entire project. My goal was to provide a journey for individual meditation in a crowd of people through creating narrow paths through water and offering unique moments that improve the visitor’s overall experience. 

 

I wanted to give each person his or her own experience along a single path, but the project also had to accommodate 100-plus visitors. To enable multiple visitors to enjoy the same space, the path had to be lengthened, and thus the maze was born.  This allowed for enough walkways for everyone, but also gave me opportunities to incorporate areas that change the visitor’s experience. 

 

The pathways are very narrow and are slightly submerged under the water, which forces visitors to focus on where they are walking. This allows each person to block out the rest of the world and meditate as he or she travels along a path. As you can see in the model, the metal wall panels are spaced further and further apart, which has a two-fold effect. It results in varied light conditions along the water-covered pathways, while also lightening up the mass as it cantilevers or spans.