Liminal Spaces

Look at this picture below. How do you feel as you look at it? Does it provide comfort, or does it leave you feeling agitated? 

The above picture is a classical example of a liminal space. Stemming from the Latin word “threshold”, a liminal space is a transitional zone. It isn’t a place one stays for long. For example, when you go to the train station, you don’t intend to just stay at the platform. The real purpose would be to use that platform to get on a train and travel elsewhere. Here, the station platform becomes an in-between place. It could also be an area one lingers in but feels a transition, such as waiting rooms or hallways. Usually, these places are jam-packed with people. Seeing no life in an otherwise crowded locale gives off an eerie feeling. The liminal aesthetic gained popularity in 2019 when a post about the ‘Backrooms’ went viral. However, this aesthetic was well-explored in photography, film and architecture beforehand. Most pictures of liminal spaces depict a place that has lost its purpose. Examples include flooded empty rooms, abandoned playgrounds and the interior of a commercial plane without any seats. Liminal spaces could also be places that did not seem to have any purpose to begin with. Some examples could be stairs leading to nowhere or seats in bizarre places. How liminal spaces make one feel differs from person to person. These spaces convey moods of surrealness, nostalgia, sadness, comfort and many more.

Liminal spaces are the Uncanny Valley of architecture. Uncanny Valley is a term explaining the phenomenon that humanised robots are creepy. For example, lifelike animatronics and realistic dolls trigger a sense of unease. Though they’re quite lifelike, they set off an internal radar in us due to subtle imperfections, such as dead eyes, unnatural facial expressions or weird skin texture. Coming back to liminal architecture, they usually include repetitive designs like long hallways and endless office cubicles. They are ambiguous with structures blending indoor and outdoor elements. Liminal spaces often feature dim or uneven lighting. The lighting is usually cold, white, and fluorescent, similar to those used in hospitals, with natural lighting used sparingly. The lack of clocks, changing lights, or visible outdoor elements causes us to feel disconnected from time. The colour palette of liminal architecture is made up of muted and washed-out colours such as beige, muted blue, and dull greys. Often, highly saturated colour is used to convey a sense of nostalgia, like in abandoned ball pits. Here, the feeling of nostalgia counteracts the uncanny feeling by evoking childhood memories and lessening the sense of disconnection. As discussed earlier, liminal spaces often have no purpose. In architecture, everything is built for a certain purpose, from the biggest of halls to the tiniest pantries. We expect places to serve a purpose but liminal spaces disrupt our sense of functionality. Our minds seek purpose but they offer none. They feel detached from human presence.

A liminal space doesn’t always have to lose or have no purpose. A school at night is a notable example of this. Even though the school is not entirely abandoned, the building once filled with bustle and chatter is now replaced with silence and emptiness. A dimly lit school building in the later hours acts as an in-between situation, caught between occupation and abandonment as it temporarily loses its intended purpose. If the school you’re visiting happens to be the one you attended, you’re bound to feel familiar as well as unsettling. Walking through the same hallways and classrooms, now devoid of students or teachers, feels uncanny. Liminal spaces often evoke a sense of unease because they hint at something just beyond perception. A darkened school feels charged with the possibility of the unknown. This setting begs for eerie storytelling, as our minds fill the emptiness with imagined presences. Reactions to this setting vary from person to person. Many kids fantasise about being at school when it's closed, for them it’s surely a delightful experience. Meanwhile, for peons working late or faculty arriving before sunrise, this experience feels ordinary. While a school at night illustrates this concept well, other spaces like malls, pools, and museums after closing hours also embody this eerie liminality. 

Liminal pools are an entity of their own. White squared tiles and cyan-coloured water with fluorescent lighting are common features. Most liminal pools appear to have staircases leading away from the pool. Though these stairs are functional, they are a hazard that any person can identify as they are inevitably slippery with no railing for support. The stairs seem endless as they fade into darkness. Not knowing where these stairs lead adds to the uncanny feeling. The depth of the pool is too shallow, barely knee-deep for an average-built person. Liminal spaces make you feel like a trespasser, utterly alone, yet the water seems to ripple without movement, distorting the pattern of the tiles beneath. Usually, both public and private pools have signs of human presence such as towels, wet footprints, and pool chairs nearby but liminal spaces have nothing of that sort.

Liminal spaces have existed as long as architecture itself, yet they only began gaining attention half a decade ago. They imitate real-life transitions: moments of uncertainty, waiting, or change. Like optical illusions, such as the highly debated blue-and-black or white-and-gold dress, liminal spaces are perceived differently by each observer. The discomfort of encountering the unfamiliar in familiar settings stems from the lack of human presence in an otherwise crowded space. Their ambiguity leaves room for human imagination. Do they simply exist, or are their purposes beyond our understanding? Perhaps it is not the space itself that unsettles us, but the question it forces us to ask: What happens in the moments between presence and absence, purpose and purposelessness?