Had a little epiphany when I went down some stairs in Morrowind. There were two doors next to one another in a room. Both led to the floor below. But they were completely separate, and mirrors of one another. I couldn't believe it. I had to check three times to make sure I was understanding the topology. I think it's because that kind of true redundancy almost does not exist, or would never exist so close to one another that a user of a building would have to make an immediate and seemingly arbitrary decision such as which path to take. We don't live in a world with those kinds of things, those edges, so exposed. But I imagined a family living in that castle, of people going up and down stairs, of children racing each other down mirrored and unseen steps. And we've lost something in our obsession with efficiency and cost-cutting, and what it is lies with that affordance and its complete novelty to me.
