LABYRINTHS

The Labyrinth in Knossos (Crete), a komplex system of paths, passages and spaces, Ariadne's thread as orientation; the flat floor mazes of Gothic cathedrals as symbol for the errant path of the Christian on his way to salvation, the Baroque hedge labyrinths, three-dimensional chess with 512 squares as a labyrinth of rules, the Islamic city, a type of tree as a fractal labyrinth of branchings and dead ends, the library in "The Name of the Rose", and finally the labyrinth as a three-dimensional network having a binary organisation of openings and impasses in all spatial directions, without centre and without limit, potentially infinite, can here all be cited.

According to Moles, the labyrinth is a partition of space by joining or separating its lots and spaces, whereby at least one exit is possible from every point. It is a spatial organisation with a high degree of geometrical concentration in spite of its visual dispersion and privacy, a compaction of solitude.

The figurations of the Metaeder with all elementary cells, crystalline, quasicrystalline, fractal, periodic and aperiodic, are to be joined up to make continuous or discontinuous structures, i.e. spatial or chronospatial labyrinths, sectors, cities in space.

The labyrinth as a spatial grid with flexible rotating and folding partitions, upright as walls and doors which are open and closed at the same time, floors capable of forming walls or ceilings alternatively, a spatial labyrinth with variable topology, to be opened or closed in all three dimensions with optional and changeable spatial dimensions and arrangements, the space-time city.

The geometrical network of the space-time city., filled out and subdivided with amorphous plastic material such as clay or plaster by its inhabitants, spanned over or subdivided for protection against weather and damp: an amorphous labyrinth such as the clay cities bordering the Sahara, or the ‚subtractive‘ cave architecture found in Anatolia.