MAPT project:

What : Observatory.

Where : Kielder, Scotland.

When : 2005.

What is an observatory besides just being housing for a telescope?

What is it that is so fascinating about observing the night sky, decoding formations of stars and studying phenomenon’s hidden from most people?

The telescope is an interesting instrument that allows us not only to observe the sky, but also for a moment to drift away and reflect on the unknown, the unrestrained, and the abstract understanding of space and time. What might seem like a banal cliché - what is out there, and the feeling of infinite smallness - becomes an inescapable reality when the eye looks through the ocular.

So where does a small building like an observatory fit in between the infinite universe and Kielder?

In this project the building uses the strange landscape with its stumps of trees to create a felling of something unknown. The rough and untreated terrain is understood as a quality and the character of the place. The observatory is designed to interact with the landscape and the night sky mimicking that this is something greater, something not familiar and not immediately reconcilable. It borders on being “from another world” and stages the interaction between the physical site and the infinite. So when the question is asked:” What is it that is so fascinating about observing the night sky, the reply will be:” it is not just observing, it is interacting and travelling out there”.