The Shape of Indoor Space
An Essay by Peter Burr
from MM04, released November 2019
An Essay by Peter Burr
from MM04, released November 2019
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A handful of years ago I was doing a series of illustrations for the New York Times and started thinking back to my earliest days as an image-maker (those precarious prepubescent years). At the time I approached this interest quite simply, often copying drawings from my Nintendo Power magazines to resituate the characters and landscapes I spent so much time with as a game-addicted youngster. I was interested in finding a way to tell stories through a single image. I had no patience to hone the skill required to draw Samus’ nutty spacesuit the same way each time.
A handful of years ago I was doing a series of illustrations for the New York Times and started thinking back to my earliest days as an image-maker (those precarious prepubescent years). At the time I approached this interest quite simply, often copying drawings from my Nintendo Power magazines to resituate the characters and landscapes I spent so much time with as a game-addicted youngster. I was interested in finding a way to tell stories through a single image. I had no patience to hone the skill required to draw Samus’ nutty spacesuit the same way each time.
![](https://cdn.myportfolio.com/aa13cb40e1f87c7b72d9f82d3e09764a/16c3c248-4bc0-4a5b-a65e-5174d93abf27_rw_1200.jpg?h=b37af11a70c0e9121dd90564b41b0c6b)
Nintendo Power Magazine
Reflecting on this as an adult (now having the patience to draw the same spacesuit over and over again in a sequence) got me thinking about metonymy — the way image makers can point towards complex ideas and topics using a small fragment of that messy idea as a stand-in for the whole. In the images of Daedalus’ labyrinth below, a circuitous piece of architecture not only describes itself as a structure housing senseless death…. it points towards a broader archetype that extends from a feeling of being lost to a symbol of systemic power governed by kings. There is so much here to make an individual feel fragile.
![](https://cdn.myportfolio.com/aa13cb40e1f87c7b72d9f82d3e09764a/1b1fbe70-d4e4-46de-b0b4-3339f175d264_rw_1200.jpg?h=c7f015326a973533799046bafb146a50)
New York Public Library Picture Collection
For one, it may point towards a landscape pitted with putrid obscurities, inextricable like a nasty trap. I’ve crawled, bashed, and otherwise conjured a path through many of these sorts of structures. These spaces often exist outside of normal time in the most extreme abstractions of place.
![](https://cdn.myportfolio.com/aa13cb40e1f87c7b72d9f82d3e09764a/b48e5450-4e02-4bf1-85fa-5ee98dc45661_rw_1200.png?h=f79eff44b27dd8d2c983e171caa8e17c)
Archizoom Associati
It may also embody exclusion zones: spaces to make things disappear without actually destroying them. These places are built to enforce the high status of that which they contain — something existing outside of life or death. An exclusion zone is a tangible landscape cloaked in an abyss — an uninviting outer space on earth. It may shroud a minotaur as easily as it may shroud an entire civilization of unwanted humans.
![](https://cdn.myportfolio.com/aa13cb40e1f87c7b72d9f82d3e09764a/16072257-e3b8-4e8a-b335-de8ad9697d06_rw_1200.jpg?h=01003fa82c1a37df1cf8c92c4d97b048)
Office
Perhaps in its most abstracted form, the labyrinth loses its walls. In this formlessness, we discover something that is beyond spatial comprehension: an infinite hallway or claustrophobia under an open sky.
![](https://cdn.myportfolio.com/aa13cb40e1f87c7b72d9f82d3e09764a/b2f0c9d6-66b3-4958-838a-afb7fa4e8001_rw_1200.jpg?h=3bd5f0a5ddc90f9f7a08e5b404db9186)
Will Insley
This single image is both unified and fragmented… a path and a pattern. You can get lost in the doubling back of its corridors then find a vantage above that spatial coil and watch it flatten into a harmless symbol. If 2019 has taught me anything about symbols, it is their lack of fixed meaning. I like that labyrinths let you get lost in them knowingly. Sometimes walking into their anxious tunnels is the best way to see a new path forward.
![](https://cdn.myportfolio.com/aa13cb40e1f87c7b72d9f82d3e09764a/c7e159e2-c60d-44f9-bbda-fe71e8ff8631_rw_1920.jpg?h=ce89670e3407658148c9b297fd33346e)
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