Thousand Yard Stare

From the moment I stood before the chimney at the Hidden Gardens in Glasgow, something stirred – a quiet urgency to understand it. It began, perhaps, as a functional thing – built to guide smoke away from the people who made and worked and lived below. Later, it became a landmark for those same people, a vertical memory etched into the sky. But when its original function dissolved in the 1960s, it slipped into obsolescence. It became a relic. A monument.

A fossil of the industrial age. And then came the silence. Not a silence of absence, but one heavy with neglect. But is it truly silent? Or is it that we’ve forgotten how to listen? That we’ve trained ourselves to ignore the slow breath of matter?

This project does not attempt to restore the chimney’s lost utility. Instead, it questions why we perceive it as lost at all. Because in our human gaze, once a thing no longer serves us, it becomes waste – discarded in function, stripped of value, excluded from care. It proposes that the chimney never stopped doing – it simply stopped doing something for us.

Through speculative design, ecological storytelling, and layered spatial interventions, the project attempts to tune us into the chimney’s subtle agency – to adjust our apertures, to see it more clearly… or perhaps less so. Because clarity does not always lie in sharp focus. Sometimes, to truly witness, we must blur the human lens and let other forms of presence come into view.

The design, in essence, makes the chimney a performer and a performance itself. From a human perspective, the experiential scope of the chimney is primarily limited to the base – the only portion accessible and spatially legible to the body. Because of this constrained geometry, natural light struggles to penetrate all the way to the bottom. The midsection and upper zones remain engulfed in darkness— spatially imperceivable from a human point of view. And yet, it is precisely within this unseeable core that the performance begins.

Taking inspiration from British artist Patrick Hughes’ ‘reverse perspective’, the design introduces a visual paradox – an architectural illusion that invites a reevaluation of perception. At roughly 10 meters above the base, an inverted frustum of a cone is inserted into the vertical shaft. Its narrower opening faces downward toward the viewer, while its broader surface supports a circular light disk. From the base, this disk mimics the scale and position of the chimney’s true mouth, replicating the appearance of the sky above.

This illusion would not have the same power without the three draft holes. As they open and draw in air, the system inhales. Hidden lighting panels embedded within the vents brighten subtly during this moment, casting diffuse rays into the interior. As the chimney exhales, the lights dim. This modulation of light simulates a living lung, allowing not just air but atmosphere to move visibly through the space. The soft rush of wind animates the grass growing along the walls, making the space feel as though it is responding to your presence – as if it knows you’re there.

Suspended at the center of this vertical chamber, almost 1.5 meters from the ground, a small, fist-sized glowing sphere – the pulse adds a second layer to this performative breathing. Hanging from a natural rope-like yarn that ascends to the underside of the diaphragm, the pulse glows and fades in synchrony with the rhythm of the draft vents and diaphragm above. This subtle light-source is not static – it resonates. The rope, swayed by the soft surges of air and the vibrations produced by this cyclical breathing, trembles gently, amplifying the sensation of the space as a living organism.

This thread acts like a spinal cord, connecting the perceivable world of the base to the illusion above, linking breath to light, light to movement, movement to sound. It creates a synchronous system – a feedback loop in which each part enhances the illusion of life, not through overt mimicry, but through choreographed subtlety.

Beneath the atmospheric illusion lies a meticulously orchestrated system – the backstage of the chimney’s performance – designed to amplify and clarify the sensations of its living body. This hidden layer is essential to making the performance both perceptible and sustainable.

Together, the hidden machinery and careful human stewardship create a seamless interface where art, nature, and technology coalesce, ensuring that the chimney remains not just an architectural relic but a continually evolving, breathing, living performance.

In the early months, the process begins with care and preparation – bio-receptive mortaris carefully applied to the inner surface, setting the stage for life to take hold. Support structures are installed, and the flora is tenderly tended to, nurtured until the chimney begins to grow its own skin. Once the surface is sufficiently cloaked in green, and the grass takes root along the vertical spine, the chimney opens its arms to the public. Visitors enter into a vessel that breathes – at first spacious, humble, a softly lit interior of verdant textures. As time passes, with regular checks and minimal interventions, the vegetation thrives.

But the process does not pause there. Roots dig deeper. They find their way into cracks, forming new ones. Over time, years or decades, who’s to say – the plants will undermine the structural integrity of the chimney. It will begin to crumble not in catastrophe, but in quiet, slow motion.

How long will it take? That’s not for me to answer. To guess would be to pretend I am larger than I am.

Yet even in collapse, the chimney will not be lost. It will still be there – just in another form. Like turning a chair upside down, it doesn’t stop being a chair. It becomes something else. Something unfamiliar, yet rooted in the same material memory.