I have always been fascinated by places like railway stations, hotel rooms, bars and cafés, airport lounges, onboard a long-haul flight, looking out of the window.

Some of them anyway.

Neither here nor there. Interstitial. Liminal. Transitional. Conduit. They can offer permission to step to the side, think, imagine, to interrogate complacency.

They are the interstitial spaces of rites of passage.

These are liberating

thirdspaces

I’ve just spent a few days in one of my favorites. Pincoff’s Hotel in Rotterdam. An old customs house where the past clings on in a warm unobtrusive present.

One of the most potentially powerful of thirdspaces is the museum.

Sjarel Ex, of Boijmans van Beuningen, sees the museum as gesamptkunstwerk – where all sorts of things and imaginings can be assembled – thirdspace.

Hakim Bey’s temporary autonomous zones. [Link]

A gallery – archaeographer – thirdspace

Cafe Scheltema, Amsterdam – [Link]

Aux Bons Crus, Paris

The Shakespeare, Durham

The Ahwahnee, Yosemite