Time-out relates a new myth, about an architecture programmed not to translate data into space but to fuse temporal experience with architecture.

I chose the traffic tailback as the locus for engineering the ultimate confrontation between man and his perception of time. This is the place where we lose our grip on the time factor. In this vacuum, Time-out offers motorists the opportunity to accelerate time or indeed slow it down. The programme of Time-out has interfaces with the different kinds of time that we can distinguish. Thus, for example, in the linear time zone there are facilities to accelerate time, in the fractured time zone you can experience time in individual moments and in the spherical time zone you can descend into your subconscious mind and decelerate.

The traffic jam continues into the building by means of a kilometre-long conveyor belt on which cars can be placed; this moves through the building in its own time frame. This 'car-mover' constitutes the scheme's artificial site and ties together the three time zones, each with its own architectural expression. The linear perception of time largely revolves around acceleration. The skin of a linear time zone is subdued in form and wraps around the motion of the programme. Its architecture emphasizes the acceleration and gives a literally transparent notion of time. At issue in the fractured time zone is our perception of the moment. This perception distorts its unambiguous skin into a clouded and dizzying impression. Here the materials and lighting disrupt all sense of directionality. The spherical time zone is shrouded in an impervious mysterious skin of which light, motion, programme and the temporal experience itself are all part.

Place of education: AvB Groningen
Specialization: architecture
Tutors: Alex van de Beld, Geert Hovingh & Wim Nijenhuis