MAZE OF PATHS​​​​​​​

Gent, Belgium

By understanding the water as an orientation point amongst the city, by seeing this natural element as guidance to reach a certain place; we make the allegory with the minotaur’s maze where an external element inside of it helps Theseus to conquer the maze and kill the minotaur’s, making the comparison we were looking for: a place amongst the city that fulfills this aspects caught in the myth, finding our center in the story. Making it clearer to make future interventions, we researched and went deeply into the essence of this place, defining this area of the city as the place of your own reflection and were you finally can reach the relief of an enclose and difficult city.

Working with these elements we found some concepts that we will like to express in our design. We have been seeing this place as one, but at the same time we have been categorizing and segregating spots, known by us as the grass, the chairs, the wall and the stairs, and this feeling is experienced by all the other daily basis users. Our proposal’s goal is to make the separate spots feel as one, connected, “PORTUS GANDA”.

Our project at the same time basically is not creating any new function. Our aim was to translate our essential thoughts and observations about the site, which we achieved by analyzing it for several weeks, in a very simple way, almost in an archetype form, purified of unnecessary features, to make the idea more objective and readable, since our outcome of the site investigation was that the place doesn’t need anything, it doesn’t need us at all. Therefore, the result is in fact “just” an object or monument. In presence very strong, even maybe a bit overwhelming. The form of the object is final, it is as it is. If one of the parts were put in another way, the idea would be changed and completely wrong. It is not inviting the audience to modify it during its duration period. However, in its simple and almost primitive form, is creating a frame, which allows users to experience “PORTUS GANDA” in a more sensorial way. The idea of the object is completed only after using it, going through it, and experiencing it in contrast with the site. At the end, it is turning the attention and importance from itself as an object to his surroundings and to the site. It is the site that becomes the subject of our project, not the object itself.