If I'm right about how the Barricades work then they present the possibility of creating magical artifacts of unrivaled power. Similar artifacts could generate wards that can repel basically unlimited sorcerous attacks and are unaffected by chorae.

Obviously there must be limits and drawbacks to this design and apparently the Artisan wasn't able to deploy this technology in a more mobile format but I wonder what would happen if Kellhus was to discover similar techniques.

Even if the Barricade is, like you suggested, a standard ward without a physical anchor, a chorae should nullify it. Maybe if it was a glamour, and they couldn't locate the spell at all, then that could protect it from being disarmed by a chorae. But we know that isn't the case. Mekeritrig knows where the door is, he and Shae stand in front of it on a small ledge off the horn, and Mek has been obsessively blasting away at the wards of the Barricade for multiple human generations. While his magics have been "missing" they haven't literally been missing the ward itself.

The Barricade-Field-Ward thing definitely fucks with space in some kind of crazy way. But they know basically where it is and it is acting on the forces Mekeritrig is throwing at the gate. It has to be acting on them or his castings would reach their target and act as intended.

So the big question is: why can't they toss a chorae at the area in which the ward is active in order to disarm it. The ward should act on the chorae just as it acts on Mekeritrig magics (it has to act on physical stuff as well as magical stuff or you could just walk through it), and that  interaction between the ward and the chorae should destroy the ward.

I might be getting into the realm of crackpot speculation but here’s how I see it working.

Maybe the way it works is that while the Barricade and its workings are magical, the "field" it generates is not. The magical machinery of the Barricade acts on some mundane force and leverages that mundane force to produce the effects of the barrier. That way, there is never any direct interaction between the sorcery of the Barricades and the intruders/attacks that it repels.

Kellhus does something like this with his telekinetic barrier of debris to repel chorae. He uses magic to leverage mundane materials thereby creating a level of separation between his sorcery and the effects of his sorcery.

The mundane material Kellhus leveraged was debris from shimeh but what if the mundane “material” that the Barricades leverage is space itself.

Whereas most spells that alter space would do so by creating a magical distortion in space. The Barricades use magic to manipulate the medium of space without tainting it with magic. Emilidis, the artisan, found a way to use sorcery to bend space in such a way that the distortions in space he created were not themselves magical. He just moves the medium around. So the Barricades generate this field and its effects are not directly magical. The forces acting on intruders/spells/chorae are themselves mundane. Just mundane space twisted up in weird ways.

Actually, this works pretty well for Shae’s description of the Barricades.

“The Barricades,” he continues. “They fold… intervals. Somehow Emilidis found a way to pinch emptiness into angles. This was why no dispensation of sheer force could batter them down… In a sense, everything you and my predecessors threw at it simply… missed.”

The thought The Barricades were the actual Glamor that was cast over Golgotterath, the thing that Shae breaks for Mekeritig. Right? If so, then its pure magic rather than a physical construct, but I could be mistaken.

Yes, the Barricades are the thing that Shae shows Mekeritig how to break. However, I don't think that the Barricades are the same thing as the glamour that was cast over Golgotterath. I think that the glamour and the Barricades were two separate lines of defense put in place by the nonmen to prevent access to Golgotterath.

The glamour hid Golgotterath and made it essentially impossible to find without special knowledge. That way no growing human civilization was going to stumble onto Golgotterath accidentally but the glamour wasn't difficult to overcome if you knew were to look.

A Nonman sorcerer named Cet’ingira—whom you know as Mekeritrig from The Sagas—revealed the location of Min-Uroikas to Shaeönanra, the Grandvizier of the ancient Gnostic School of Mangaecca. The glamour about the wicked stronghold was broken, and the Schoolmen of the Mangaecca reclaimed Min-Uroikas—to the woe of us all

My reading of this is that it wasn't difficult for Mekeritrig to bypass the glamour itself. His knowledge of the location of Golgotterath seemed to be enough for him to bring the Mangaecca to the horns. However, that information wasn't enough to actually enter the arc. The Barricades were the second line of defense. The Barricades sealed the entrances to Golgotterath and made it impossible to enter even if you were able to find it. After Mekeritrig bypassed the glamour and brought the Mangaecca to the arc, there was an extended period of time where the Mangaecca and their nonmen allies just hung out around Golgotterath trying to figure out how to get in. Maybe they even started raising fortifications around it at this point and making it their base of operations.

It isn't totally clear but when Tirtirga comes to visit Shae it seems like the Sohonc have known for some time that the Mangaecca have bypassed the glamour and are studying the arc. Up until now they just haven't been that concerned because they believe that the second line of defense, the Barricades, is impassible.

Ok, so that's my argument for the glamour and the Barricades being distinct workings of sorcery.

As for this:

If so, then its pure magic rather than a physical construct, but I could be mistaken.

By "physical construct" you mean magical artifact right? Because I brought the Barricades up as an addition to the list of magical artifacts being assembled in this thread, not as an example of the Tekne.

The Barricades are definitely a magic artifact and not just a spell.

“They are called the Barricades,” the Nonman says. “The Artisan himself fashioned them.“
The Man gazes in wonder at the configurations of nimil and light. “So that none might enter…” he murmurs.
---
Then he turns to the Barricades, examines its fractal complexities
---
Shaeönanra finds the Nonman thus, sprawled unconscious before the Barricades–or what remains of them. He kneels at his side, lays fingers on his cheek. Warm. He looks to the shattered portal, to the hanging plates, the mangle of the Stain

That said: