Stairwell Between

Hidden inside Slocum’s School of Architecture, where weary-eyed students pay to rush deadlines, stairs many walked up to Studio just as we do, the bustling occupants sweating pure epinephrine, there is a space unlike others. Maybe I was sleep deprived (I am), but amid a call on hold, I walked out of the second-floor studio and sat on the stairwell nearby —those stairs that join Link Hall, the School of Engineering to Slocum’s School of Architecture. Stairwell 2 is a literal manifestation of the tacit connection we have with the engineering students. Maybe it’s the tired eyes, but these walls don’t seem to align. Nothing makes sense here. The ceilings pull far up and immediately push down. Partition walls try, as they might, to block the light scattering from the large glass pane. The floors just don’t meet at all to Slocum’s own ground. Gray stairs extend left and out. You have to go down to go up. Standing in one spot, the adjacent floor meets you at eye level. Have I finally done it? Was that too many Celsius in one day? In many countries, death is in progress. We, all living organisms, and energy live in a cycle of samsara. We are born, die, and are reborn. A loop that keeps going and going. If you could remember the lives you lived and the lives you could live… maybe it would be better not to. If we live in a perpetual cycle of insanity, is this the space between? The null, the void, the between.

Souls I could meet murmuring from behind each closed door, creaking open ever so slightly in the breeze. Gazing down, there were doors to the lives I had lived spelled in “DANGER KEEP OUT”. One by one, the lattice grid above me barricades places I could be. Cracks in the walls, cold air blowing on my sides through slits of plasters. Mechanical systems, HVAC cooling, pipes, I-beams, and bolts hang precariously. It’s as if ; the stairwell itself appears not meant for habitation, like people were never supposed to be here, like I shouldn’t be here. Maybe that’s why no one ever stays. Construction workers walk up and down. Students pass without a second glance. Cracks and crevices, objects from a century ago, exist undisturbed. The old Slocum entablature breathes asthmatic whilst a 6-foot stair jabs across its front visage. Walking down those same steps, each stride accompanied by gasping for air, the broken entablature whispers to me.

“You barely noticed this stairwell standing outside – with all the cold air rushing you, how could you? The ridiculous facade where Link and Slocum join certainly doesn’t help. How could the stairwell be seen?”
Yet, from inside, everything is clear. Every step, all the time you carried museum boards from Schine, you never even noticed you were being watched. An invisible space that never was meant to be, born from pure contingency.

Sitting on the dusty grey floor, I don’t remember entering at all. Looking around, stairs talk over each other, from wall to wall, sporadic turns after turns, floors have no numbers, nor should they be numbered. Connecting to each crevice of Slocum, my gaze tilts up to the plastic sign “Floor 3”. Every door is a door to the lives that could have been lived.

Certainly, this isn’t the only strange space that excited passersby. Many nooks and crevices exist in the landscape of architecture. Residual spaces left behind as we continuously expand the empire. The strangeness and byproduct of progress leave these zones unfamiliar yet familiar. The Catalonian philosopher Ignasi de Sol-Morales, in his essay, envelopes the concept into a word: “Terrain Vague.” The author describes Terrain Vagues as abandoned, uninhabited, residual spaces, left for vegetation to regain as materials decay slowly.



“The Romantic imagination, which still survives in our contemporary sensibility, feeds on memories and expectations. Strangers in our own land, strangers in our city, we inhabitants of the metropolis feel the spaces not dominated by architecture as reflections of our own insecurity, of our vague wanderings through limitless spaces that, in our position external to the urban system, to power, to activity, constitute both a physical expression of our fear and insecurity and our expectation of the other, the alternative, the utopian, the future.”¹

The power of these overlooked areas lies in their lack of authoritative control. No single program has dictated the space, no one truly holds ownership. The potential and unbounded identity pokes at uncertainty, both fearful and hopeful. Terrain Vague often laughs at capitalism as a mindless rapid expansion with careless oversights. Neglected spaces hold limitless potential. Ignasi de Sol-Morales doesn’t outright reject urban redevelopment of the area but encourages a sensitive approach, one that embodies the uncertain and open-ended qualities.

The Fremont Troll project, for one, was an artist community that transforms the leftover space of an underpass through an installation of a too-well-known Scandinavian icon. From somewhere drugs were injected into veins to the vibrant blood of the neighborhood, the troll sculpture continued the expression of ambiguity and mysticism but drew a touristy crowd.²

On the other hand, a poor example of the Terrain Vague may be the Highline in NYC. The project in itself was highly successful as a green development. However, it completely sanitized the obscure and vague potential, transforming the railway into a capitalistic venture that dominoed the gentrification of surrounding sights. Although a less extreme example of Terrain Vague, Stairwell 2 and its sister construction are an afterthought that retain a mystic quality, one that is isolating and contemplative.

In the broader conversation, the stairwells hint at Michel Foucault’s Theory of Heterotopia, the in-between space of utopia and dystopia, othered and strange places that disobey human norms by layering meanings after meanings. Although heterotopias are spaces constructed and Terrain Vague spaces deconstructed, both mirror society. The two terms have a shared quality.

“The heterotopia is capable of juxtaposing in a single real place several spaces, several sites that are in themselves incompatible.”³

One such heterotopic space is a museum. An othered place where time and space accumulate, artifacts from all corners of the continents and time collapse into a singular point. Not just Museums, but theaters, Persian gardens, cemeteries, and zoos are all juxtapositions of the world. Theaters, through a collage of actors and sets, bring unreachable space and periods to the audience. Persian gardens and their four parts are symbolic of the world. The cemeteries accrued bodies from all ages and places. Zoos trap fauna that wouldn’t normally exist in a particular location. As well, the stairwell collecting century-old dust speaks of a time long past, now meeting the contemporary pipes and beams. Not only does the stairwell juxtapose space, but also reflects the insanity and artificiality of everyday life. The disorganized chaos of elements and history contrasting places outside is an illusionary heterotopic reality. If societal norms dictate the way we should act in certain places, I find this stairwell and its inability to reconcile with society as messy as freedom.