Rue du Départ investigates the potential of layering in architecture. Through iterative deployment of analogue drawing, model-making, and film animation, these methodologies reveal a series of adventitious layers within alternate architectural worlds. Using a cyclical process of filming, drawing, and modelling, different spaces are re-animated, creating a constant feedback loop. This enables a method of flattening and stretching across different media, which reveals the different spatial arrangements that can exist in the same instance.

The scheme learns from Plato’s ‘Allegory of the cave’ which likens our understanding of the layers of reality to that of prisoners in a cave, who can only perceive the outside world through shadows. Programmatically, this is translated into a hostel accessed by tram, which takes the explorer on a journey that weaves through Amsterdam, Netherlands, manifesting spatial configurations that play with viewer perception. The project employs the tram as an activator to tease and recompose the hostel’s receptive architecture, showcasing various spatial superimpositions that sit beyond the standard perceptible understanding of three-dimensional space.