Discovered by an archaeologist, red fox and magpie, the ruins of 'The Woodland Library' are found between the labyrinthine paths of Sherrardspark Woodland in Welwyn Garden City. Framed as a 'parafiction', the project is a venture into a realm of dichotomies: architecture and literature; architecture and landscape; architecture and wilderness.

Often cast as the backdrop in mythology and folk stories, the woodland represents a place of liminality, unknown characters and transformation. It is fertile ground for the imagination of the architect, whose hands waver across the landscape like that of a shaman over the flames of a camp fire.

Inspired by the literary teachings of Umberto Eco in his Six Walks in The Fictional Woods (1994), the project intersects principles of fictional literature with architectural design as a way to revisit the role of the architect as a spatial storyteller.

Voyages within the woodland reveal infinite ruins that include archives, gardens, follies, workshops and amphitheatres, some of which are rumoured to have been designed by an architectural apprentice of Isamu Noguchi and John Hejduk. Others are rumoured to have been built by the Roman God Janus, whose two faces look to the past and the future at the same time.