B3_#035 // The Waiting Room // Sabrina Syed : 

 ‘…The non-place is the opposite of Utopia: it exists, and it does not contain any organic society’-Marc Augé, ‘Non-Places’

Where do we wait?

Everywhere and Nowhere. 

Collaged together like a diorama of spliced moments: a café, a tube stop, a doctor’s office, an airport terminal – the spaces that we are often spent waiting seem as universal as they are fragmented. The anthropologist Marc Augé describes ‘empirical non-place’ as spaces of circulation, consumption and communication. What a coincidence, that those spaces’ regular occupiers are those who wait. 

We wait in non-places, often alone, lost in our thoughts. We all remember what it feels like to wait, but rarely register the details of the spaces we are in. Non-Places are everywhere and nowhere. And the unique thing about waiting is that, it too, can be everywhere and nowhere. 

Sabrina Syed is a year out student from ESALA, Edinburgh school of architecture and landscape architecture