massachusetts institute of technology
fall 2022
studio professor | carrie norman

the prompt asked for a stair to there and a stair to nowhere. morphologically, this is interesting because nowhere breaks down into either a prefix and a root or two conjoined roots : no.where or now.here. this dichotomy led to the temporal lens through which the project was conceived. calling upon metaphysical conceptions of time, stage theory was selected as the starting point for the project given its notion of a constantly moving, privileged present which ultimately leads to our illusion of the 'passage of time', or , of our passage through time. temporal traversal formalizes this through a cyclical set of steps, or stages, encircling a, or the, void. laterally, the steps break down into several smaller scales in order to ‘turn the corner’. this breakdown is left intentionally unresolved so as to reference all of our misconceptions of time.