THE FIFTH SEASON: SUBLIME IN THE CITY
By Quintin Lake
featured in the book Cinematic Architecture 1993-2008
A few years ago I travelled with some friends one summer to the arctic. For two month we travelled through this reduced landscape leaving our homes in the city. We moved through the ever-changing light and the constant horizon. Kant wrote that the sublime is the moment before fear, feeling overwhelmed and yet using the power of the mind to stay grounded. Occasionally the wind would blow the snow with such force that there were no forms from which to take a bearing.
It sometimes seems bizarre when our desires are so ephemeral, that we live and move in such fixed forms. I yearn for a space of the fifth season within the city: a horizon and no walls, a house constructed of light, whose presence takes one by surprise. and responds to the seasons.
The house of the fifth season is located beyond the houses in a position of lightness where the possibilities of a new horizon can be seen. In the city the light sits perched on a raised structure, its form is created with a laser-light projection. The ephemeral edges are barely visible during the day. At night the reflective coating of the sky mesh screen glows with the laser light. The seasons of nature and the mind are the house. The layered transparent interior filters the city. The house has become the horizon.
Text & Photography © Quintin Lake, 2009
Geometry & Silence 
this is beautiful. it reminded me of a few minutes late last night when i was in highbury fields under an orange streetlamp and the edges of my field of vision disappeared in the darkness and all the shapes on the ground were submerged under leaves and it briefly seemed like a wild place and not north london. book looks interesting. hope you’re well.
Hi Julian, thanks for your comment and evokative words. Maybe see you at Explore ar the RGS?