Its not every day that you find yourself stepping into a piece of art by accident. This is exactly what happened to me recently as I was visiting the construction site of a building that we designed.

I am of an age in which I collected architecture books to have as reference for design. Prior to the internet and amazing sites like ArchDaily one would collect a curated group of books that could be used as inspiration or even just as reference. I still have many of those books, but one book stays with me at every desk I have ever worked at. It is the book in which the title itself sparks a creative state of mind. 

This is a book that explores the elements of constructed space and uses iteration to make evident how a slight shift in surface, reflection, or repetition can give very similar spaces completely different characters. I have spent many collective hours flipping back and forth between pages and trying to really ingest how these subtleties can be used meaningfully in practice. They are also simply masterful watercolors and bring joy every time I flip open my book.

You can then imagine how blown away I was when I was on the construction site, and I stepped into this:

I was amazed what I was seeing. I felt like I had stepped into on of Lauretta’s spaces and was enthralled. Although this was not a space intended for occupation since it is simply the space left over between a retaining wall and our foundation, I felt like I was in a kind of sacred space. A space not conceived of in its materials or lighting, space to be closed-up and forgotten. It is very much not architecture, but it is clearly evidence that it does exist.