Brutal Liminality

Examining humanity’s relationship with the built environment

There are certain places in our built environment that evoke strong emotions of longing; a sort of loneliness that is somehow amplified by the surrounding architecture. Places that were designed to accompany many people, but in the present moment, there is only one: You. There is a word to describe such places, and it is ‘liminal’ — situated at a sensory threshold. Liminal places are often where transitional movement occurs. Essentially, these places exist only for the transit of a person between places or states of existence.

It can be easy to forget our roots as humans — our intimate connection with nature, not as something separate, but as something one with us. The built environment often encompasses our entire perception of reality, obscuring what it truly means to be alive. Even when we separate ourselves from the physical built environment, a monumental task in and of itself, it is only more difficult to separate from the metaphysical built environment. Before I go any further, I will clarify that by ‘built environment’ I am referring to every structure, both physical and intangible, created by humans. We assign these structures an inherent reality within our perception, and based off this reality, we assign an inherent importance. It is this assigned reality and importance that…