Dwelling in Time explores the relationship between presence and concealment through a live, work, and exhibition building organized around the fictional figure of the Timekeeper. Rather than separating public and private programs, the project folds them into one another, allowing the occupant to remain partially hidden within the thickness of the architecture. His presence is registered indirectly through sound, translucency, movement, and glimpses across interstitial spaces. The building becomes a device for revealing without fully exposing, using material and spatial conditions to mediate what is seen, heard, and understood. In this sense, the project became an early investigation into questions that continue to shape my work: how architecture can make something present through its effects, even when the thing itself remains unseen.
Through collage, the exhibition space’s programming was developed. The collage provided inspiration for the built form, using the site’s axis as a timeline to physically take guests through the history of Winnipeg.
Exploring potential facade panels through the process of casting plaster onto a bed of sand. With this, a fossilized record of the site’s topography is embedded into the fabric of the building.
Thickness operates in the project as more than the depth of a wall. It becomes an inhabitable zone between public and private space, allowing the Timekeeper to occupy the building without being fully exposed to its visitors. Thickened walls, recessed openings, slatted surfaces, and interstitial spaces produce moments where his presence can be sensed through sound, movement, or translucency before it is visually confirmed. The wall therefore shifts from a simple boundary into a spatial mediator, holding both separation and connection at once.
