The building called Walker Court is comprised of seventeen single occupant flats. It is built on the same site as an ancient coaching inn, from which place horse drawn coaches travelled to other cities like Edinburgh and Glasgow. I wanted the history of the place to be reflected in the new gates, and so I based their design on all the architectural forms of the entrance hall – interlaced with tracks that coach wheels might once have left in the mud.
As a person who is homecoming enters the building from Canal Street, their eye passes through a certain point in space as they approach the gate, so that from such a notional point the shape of the gate would exactly match the background architecture of the modern building while hinting at what a person might have seen in former times from that same point in space…
…I want to use this space to consider time and this time to consider space.
We understand temporally, by which I mean that we are not able to ‘exteriorize ourself outside of time’, to experience time passing for an environment of things that we were but are no longer part of. We understand that things persist because we ourself persist, but we do not know if things persist in something called ‘time’ or if they (we) persist because we understand ourself to persist. We cannot assume the actuality of time.
Similarly, we understand spatially, by which I mean that we are not able to ‘exteriorize ourself outside of space’, to experience ourself extending in space from a position of exteriority to the space we are in. We understand that things extend spatially, but we do not know if things extend in something called ‘space’ or if they (we) extend because we understand ourself to extend. We cannot assume the actuality of space.
But we can assume the actuality of understanding because we ourself are that actuality. It is the character of understanding that it ebbs and flows now and then, here and there, presenting itself ‘at this moment’ as things in time and space. But time and space are not the prior condition for the understanding of things; rather, understanding is the state of which things in time and space are but a condition.
The Perth gates present two moments of understanding – things from time periods not normally experienced together ‘here and now’. But if it is merely our spatio-temporal condition of understanding which experiences things in different places at different times, then there is no absolute temporality that distinguishes between the modern architecture and the ancient coach tracks.
It is my aim in this work to disclose the manner of spatio-temporal understanding.