Experiencing the space

As architecture students, we have always used terms that we have heard and repeated, terms that, personally, never gasped the entire meaning of it. Terms like; experience the space, experience the architecture…etc. I don’t think I ever understood the exact meaning of it until the day we were in Toledo when we saw the escalator project, or better said, when we “experienced” the architecture of it.
What was amazing about that project was the fact that, the higher you get, using the escalators, the more the space differs and takes another shape. The folds that created the space around the escalators were manipulated thoughtfully. It gave you a different view of both the horizon of the city, and the area we were in. So you will always feel the change. Something I realized well when we had to sketch the place. We had to go down the escalators and sketch the space without stopping for a second to look at it. Sketch on the move. Creating the space that we were experiencing on paper was so hard. Every single second the angles changed, the solids and voids changed, nothing stayed the same. Not being able to put all those information on paper made me think of what way can I capture the moment. Not even taking a video would have done it justice since the angle of vision would be still limited. The only way that someone can understand this is by being in it. That was when I really understood what “Experiencing the space” is all about.