Architect: Richard England Project: Dar il-Hanin Samaritan Meditation Garden, Aquasun lido Geo: Santa Venera and St. Julian’s, Malta
Architecture unexpectedly became a response to the crisis in the horror genre. The film The Backrooms was released, where the source of fear is endless empty spaces. The idea comes from internet culture: back in 2019−2020, TikTok was flooded with images of empty fluorescent corridors, abandoned pools, and deserted hotel hallways. This type of content became known as liminal spaces — a subculture at the intersection of anthropology, biology, and folklore.
In 1909, Arnold van Gennep introduced the term from the Latin limen (threshold, boundary), describing rites of passage (initiation, wedding). In the 1960s, Victor Turner developed the idea — liminality became a space between two states. The term entered architecture to describe transitional zones — stairs, lobbies, airlocks, and ramps. In the 1980s, Bernard Tschumi studied human behavior in moments of interspace, while Marc Augé in 1992 introduced the concept of non-places (Non-Lieux): airports, highways, and hotels where a person exists in temporary limbo.
During the lockdown, public spaces that were once crowded instantly emptied. People saw a world frozen in time. Thanks to quarantine, internet culture reached its peak, and millions of Zoomers began to nostalgize about the 2000s, mixing it with Dreamcore aesthetics. Young people highlighted the main flaw of that era — soullessness and alienation — turning ordinary places into horror sets.
But why does an empty windowless office with blinding light evoke such strange emotions? In nature, noon is a turning point. The sun at its zenith burns away shadows, the landscape becomes flat, and nature freezes in the heat. The appearance of silence in such conditions is an evolutionary signal of danger: there’s nowhere to hide from a predator.
In The Backrooms, fluorescent lamps play the role of the scorching sun. Without windows or time changes, the brain is trapped in eternal midday, where it’s impossible to track time — hence the instant disorientation and apathy. Richard England designs surreal arcades and staircases to the sky, where a person pauses to recalibrate their senses. Minimalists like Peter Zumthor or Tadao Ando deliberately create long empty corridors with a single beam of light.
In a world overloaded with notifications and visual noise, empty non-functional spaces offer a rare opportunity to clear your mind. People fall into two categories when viewing liminal spaces: those who feel anxiety and those who experience radical serenity. And what do you feel?
P.S. These images personally give me the creeps, so armed with a banana and Lightroom, I ruthlessly fixed all the depression suggested by the dear editorial team. May the authors forgive me.