How do we perceive and experience spatial tension? Can we embody it, traverse it, highlight it, confront it, embrace it, release it, and even dissolve it? Can fixed structures like urban architecture be malleable? If we can’t change a fixed structure how can we create malleability within and around it?

A guided and silent walk that attempted to expose and explore a point of tension between two buildings: The Holy Trinity Church and Trinity Shopping Center in Leeds.

The Holy Trinity Church was built in the 1700s, it had an open space around it and it was possible to circumnavigate the building. Its location near the pedestrian shopping area and the train station would have made a perfect spot for a green area and/or a playground. In 2013 the space around the church was instead filled with yet another shopping center – Trinity Shopping Center – which completely attaches itself to the church suffocating it and making it impossible to circumnavigate.

The walk was designed to highlight points of tension where the access to the back of the building have been blocked by the new building and the contrast between the imposition of this new ‘church’ of consumerism against the old spiritual ‘church’. Whilst also attempting to propose a sense of more malleability between the two buildings by connecting them through a physical journey and bringing a mindful sensorial walk into a busy consumerist space.

October 2015