The Labyrinth of Rooms: An Architectural Allegory

(Paperback)

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The Labyrinth of Rooms is a story with one character, Human, who is an allegorical representation of us all.

Human suddenly awakes in a square room with no memory of a prior life. A corridor leads them from that room to the next, then another, and so on until they reach the end of a sixty-three-room labyrinth. As the journey progresses, Human contemplates their surroundings, studying the unique shape of each room and how it affects their thoughts, feelings, and actions. To understand the significance of the rooms architecture, Human engages in different types of thinking: questioning why the rooms were designed as such, imagining situations the rooms can host, praising what they find geometrically pleasing, speculating about the nature of the labyrinth, and even complaining about their forced existence within it. This variety is reflected in the writing of the book, which intentionally juxtaposes different genres, including storytelling, philosophical reasoning, dialogues, and prose poetry. In The Labyrinth of Rooms, the human life is conceived as a series of settings, or stated otherwise: a coevolution of our mental space and physical space.

Author Bio

Ali AlYousefi is an architect, artist, and writer. He has explored the topics of architectural theory and literary genres in various projects: two Arabic books, academic articles, and a PhD dissertation at UPenn.