Mayan

Mayan grew from a fascination with archaeological plans and the strange beauty of buildings reduced to their footprint. At ancient sites, centuries of architecture can survive as little more than lines in the ground. Walls become outlines, rooms become enclosures and entire structures have to be understood through what is missing.

There is something compelling about looking at these remnants and trying to read them. A few foundations can describe scale and proportion, but much of the architecture has to be imagined. You begin to wonder where people entered, how one room led to another, or why a particular space occupied the centre. The plan becomes a puzzle between what is known and what has been lost.

That thinking found its way into Mayan. The geometry has the character of an excavated plan, with one boundary sitting inside another and smaller divisions marking an imagined centre. I was interested in the idea that a pattern could suggest architecture without depicting a building at all.

The name came from thoughts of ancient Mesoamerican sites, although the reference was never intended as a literal reconstruction. It is the archaeological viewpoint that matters more: looking down rather than up, and seeing architecture as a collection of traces.

Mayan plays with that distance between evidence and imagination. It could be the footprint of a temple, a courtyard or something entirely invented. The uncertainty is part of its appeal.

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