Once, an island city was divided into the lawful and the transgressors. When identified, the transgressors were expelled from the delirium of the urban island to isolation in the periphery of civilization, perhaps to return one day . Those who did return to the island could not re-adjust to the demands of society that they had once been removed from because they suffered no visible humility in their exodus. After all attempts of revising isolation based incarceration had failed, the authorities of the city, employed the desperate and savage use of Landscape by converting the central park of the island into a ‘nature’ labyrinth for the exposure and incarceration of these occupants in which to carry out their sentences. The Labyrinth was a masterpiece…

The architect’s of the labyrinth sought to recreate a primitive society for its incarcerated denizens, one that would educe the interdependence that had been lost and abused in the technological awakening of contemporary civilization. The labyrinth was the ultimate densifier of natural conditions, expanding a journey by separating it with miles of wilderness amongst the dense confines of the island city. Openings within the labyrinth were established for differing purposes within the heterotopic eduction society.

Hunting Meadows / Fauna previously imprisoned in the park’s zoo and meadows are released unto the total ecology of the labyrinth. The animal populations monitored from the heavens as the labyrinth’s men adjust to the ecology of the hunt in this new primitive form of food.

Receiving Port / The incumbents arrive into a vast open court beyond which the pinnacles of the delirious city loom. Here they are provided with instruction and training to adapt to the primitive conditions upon which they are about to embark. It is only here that they fully comprehend their visibility in the island; exiled backwards in time.

Gathering Gardens / Botanical scavenging took place throughout the park; the pre-designed ecologies of the conservatory proved to be a viable food source. An agricultural framework emerged, as did the gatherers to support their most reliable method of survival.

Shrine and Bosque / The shrine of babel perches atop the landscape creating a sense of ceremony in the maze. Annually, the labyrinth dwellers work together in perpetuity to assemble and erect the tower as a social contract. The tower is occupied for the height of winter solstice and is reborn with the new equinox. The park’s reservoir is preserved as an bathing bosque for the worker’s to indulge in after a day’s labor.

Maze of Contrition / When denizens have demonstrated the social values deemed eligible to exit this nature and return to their utopia in the heavens; there is a personal quest through the maze, an evaluation of moral judgment, and a test of ones ethics.

The stewards of the labyrinth were the former peers of its denizens. Living in the deliriously built towers of the heavens surrounding the park. The cities tower-dwellers, now look-out over this neo-nature prison, observing their comrades below in this purgatory of the primitive, a foreign yet mesmerizing detention arena, hoping to reunite with them one day.

/  Project Team  

Jonathan A. Scelsa, Jennifer Birkeland

/  Project Info  

/ Project Type - Park Design
/ Publication - Displacements Journal
/ Project Location - New York, New York
/ Project Date - 2013