Carsten Höller: Decision | Delvendahl Martin Architects

Delvendahl Martin Architects have collaborated with the artist Carsten Höller to create a series of site specific installations at the Hayward Gallery in London.

On entering the Hayward Gallery’s new show ‘Carsten Höller : Decision’, visitors are faced with the choice of two entrances, each leading them to a separate corridor. Created in collaboration with Delvendahl Martin Architects, the ‘Decision Corridors' take the visitors on different meandering routes through the first gallery. Designed as a series of dark and confined spaces, the passageways repeatedly turn and change levels with the aim to disorientate and confuse anyone entering the installation.

In order to enhance the desired, almost claustrophobic experience and to allow sound to travel as freely as possible, the architects chose galvanized sheet metal as the sole construction material for the corridors. Adapting the techniques normally used for forming air handling ductwork allowed the creation of human sized galvanised steel segments with minimal use of material. The thin sheet metal and the geometry of the spaces help to amplify noise and create multiple echoes in the process, making it difficult to locate the origin of sound. In conjunction with the darkness inside the corridors, this acoustic characteristic contributes to a diffused perception of the surroundings and fellow visitors, as well as a heightened sense of disorientation.

Aesthetically, the silver galvanized structure appears like a gigantic version of a service infrastructure normally hidden behind false ceilings or confined to service risers. At the same time it provides a conceptual link to the artists’ Isomeric Slides at the end of the exhibition, whilst forming a strong contrast against the backdrop of the brutalist concrete architecture of the building.