Thick Edge: Architectural Boundaries and Spatial Flows

Author: Iain Borden Year: 2006 (reprint; first published in Architectural Design, vol. 66, no. 11–12, 1996, pp. 84–7; the excerpt here is pp. 84–6) Source type: chapter (Intimus: Interior Design Theory Reader, ed. Mark Taylor & Julieanna Preston, John Wiley & Sons, 2006, pp. 49–56; © 1996 John Wiley and Sons Ltd, reprinted by permission) Raw file: raw/chapters/borden_2006-thick-edge-architectural-boundaries.md

Summary

Borden argues that architectural boundaries are not objects, lines, or surfaces but thick edges — zones of socio-spatial negotiation in which social relations are "challenged and controlled through architectural materiality." Against the design-intention view of architecture ("the product of design intention, from which social effects simply follow") and against post-1970s functional and social-history readings alike (both reducing the interrelation of buildings, spaces and people "to a false dualism between object and social use"), he realigns spatiality — with Lefebvre "in particular," and with Augé, Soja, Harvey and Foucault — as a force or flow among social elements: "what I call a 'space of flows'." Two built cases carry the argument: the blue wooden screen (1991) with which the Post Office sealed the portico of Holy Trinity church, Kingsway, against the homeless people who had made it a shelter, and whose 45° deviation off a sitable low wall leaves "only 150 millimetres clear" — the thickness of the human body used as an instrument of exclusion; and Broadgate, the post-'Big Bang' financial enclave in the City of London, where the unsealable 'Go-Between Screens' (Alan Evans) do not physically exclude but provoke the visitor's self-questioning — "'Should I be here, and now? Do I have the right of passage?'" — "the ultimate extension of the Benthamite project of surveillance, in which each and every citizen surveys and disciplines themselves." The Intimus editors frame the chapter for interior design theory: having "long been relegated to the domain of the 'inside'," the discipline "confronts the issue of boundary crossing in the form of both literal and theoretical thresholds," and boundaries emerge as "permeable, temporal and political markers of bodily negotiation."

Key Claims

Boundaries have real social effects: the Holy Trinity blue screen is "not so much that the building is shut off from people, but that people – particularly the homeless – are divorced from it" — a "boundary of exclusion, a brutally frontal relation which physically repels the unwanted and the unwashed," "the architecture of separation, of clear blue water between spaces and peoples."
Before the screen, the forsaken church (by 1991) was appropriated by Holborn's homeless as "at once public domain and private to those seeking defensible space and their own appropriated form of illegal real estate"; they "recomposed a niche space from layers of clothes, cardboard and classical architecture."
The dominant views of architecture are reductive: either design intention with social effects "simply" following, or the 'second nature' view (Lefebvre, Soja) that offers only Soja's "illusion of opacity," by which "spatiality is reduced to physical objects and forms."
Even politically-minded architectural history since the 1970s retains a dualism: either function (social activities "simply accommodated in architectural design (particularly in plan)") or social history (buildings as "backdrops to the drama of everyday life") — a "false dualism between object and social use."
The positive thesis: architecture reconceptualised as a "space of flows" — "not as objects, but as the interrelation between things, spaces, individuals and ideas" — citing Tschumi ("architecture… could not be dissociated from the events that 'happened' in it") and Adrian Forty (architecture "is not made just once, but is made and remade over and over again"). "Architecture is both produced and reproduced, designed and experienced. It is a medium not a message, a system of power relations not a force, a flow not a line."
Via Simmel: "the boundary is not a spatial fact with sociological consequences but a sociological fact that is formed spatially" — boundaries "make social orders more concrete, more intensely experienced," are "indeterminate in themselves," and "do not cause sociological effects in themselves, but are formed between social elements."
The blue screen is itself a spectacle in Debord's sense: "not a collection of images, but a social relation among people, mediated by images" — "The conception of the blue screen purely as object is then reductive."
Exclusion is engineered through bodily dimensions: the low wall before the portico was "of the right depth and height to sit and, potentially, to sleep upon"; the screen's "sudden 45 degrees deviation… terminates halfway across its depth, leaving only 150 millimetres clear in front" — "through the precise control of screen and wall in relation to the thickness of the human body, the low wall becomes too shallow for a person to sleep upon, or to sit upon for any length of time."
Edge-hardening is a spreading urban repertoire: "spiked windowsills, 'decorative' railings, studded flower-planters and night-time automatic sprinkler systems to 'clean' shop and office doorways are being used to repel the public from the edge of the street."
The boundary also acts on the 'respectable' pedestrian: the screen's smooth surface is "devoid of detail interest and exactly that tactility which Maurice Merleau-Ponty reasserted against the domination of vision" — "There is no occasion to linger, observe or inspect." Vision is "just one of a series of body-centric architectural devices."
The central definition: "The boundary is not a surface but a thick edge, a five metre deep in-between zone in which social relations are challenged and controlled through architectural materiality."
Broadgate (Rosehaugh Stanhope + British Rail, 29 acres, 4 million sq ft, post-'Big Bang' 1986) is "an aesthetic enclave within the fragmented postmodern city" of "Americanised 'fashion effect' architecture" (Arup Associates, SOM), with entry signs barring those not in 'smart' dress, service workers "hidden in a subterranean undercroft," a "similarly Disneyfied scopic regime" (undesirables escorted off, litter removed, hawks against pigeons) — "Social difference within the 20,000 working population is accommodated, but only within a class, gender and race framework predicated on the middle class Oxbridge-educated businessman."
Post-IRA-bomb (1992, 1993; Canary Wharf 1996) security migrated to the City's "Ring of Steel" armed road-checks and 24-hour 'Camerawatch' CCTV, so Broadgate's managers rely on private guards and cameras — its boundaries are "free to be configured toward more social ends, installing a further social ring of defence within the City's militaristic frontier."
The social cordon is marked materially: "brass rails let into the pavement signify the edge of the property line, public art like Serra's 45-tonne 'Fulcrum' signals entrances, armorial devices record the borough thresholds, and various gates denote the transition from public to private realms."
Alan Evans's 'Go-Between Screens' invert exclusion: "even when 'closed' one can walk around their sides, a 2 metre gap being left for this purpose. The boundary here is never sealed, operating in a manner other than physical exclusion" — their mild-steel, hammered 'soft' surface contrasting with the "highly-machined surrounding buildings."
As "privatised urban space under corporate control, Broadgate in effect has no resident-owners, and everyone who enters is either a worker, visitor or trespasser" — the heterotopia in Foucault's sense: "one thinks one has entered and, by the sole fact of entering, one is excluded."
Control operates through the self: the gates "not so much obstruct horizontal movement of the body, as… challenge the visitor's self-perception as to whether they are permitted to enter" — provoking "'Should I be here, and now? Do I have the right of passage?'"
The passage is temporal: "The gates are not just the space but the lived time of several seconds through which the visitors validate themselves in relation to Broadgate. As a result, space, temporality, body and identity are mutually confronted and constructed, in a version of Augé's 'non-place as a turning back on the self.'"
This is "the ultimate extension of the Benthamite project of surveillance, in which each and every citizen surveys and disciplines themselves"; the gate is a mirror returning, in Augé's terms, "an image of himself… The space of non-place creates neither singular identity nor relations; only solitude, and similitude" — visitors "reconfigure themselves in the normative character of Broadgate, such that, as with Disneyland's staff, everyone becomes a 'cast member.'"
In the Sartrean frame, the architecture is a "'other's look'" conferring spatiality on the viewer — but looked back upon: the boundary "does not act upon visitors, but is a projection outward by visitors considering themselves in relation to the architecture," entering a "'betweenness of place' beyond objectivity and subjectivity."

Connections

Concepts: boundaries (the fifth, socio-spatial register — the boundary as thick edge), thick-edge (the chapter's named concept), space-of-flows (the reconceptualisation of spatiality), hostile-architecture (the "edge-hardenings" — spiked sills, sprinklers, the 45° deviation), privatised-public-space (Broadgate's "spaces at once public and private"), non-places (Augé's non-place as "a turning back on the self"), heterotopia (entering as exclusion), spectacle (the screen-as-spectacle), appropriation (the homeless' "illegal real estate"), embodiment (the body's thickness as design parameter; body-centric devices), panopticon (the Benthamite project extended to self-surveillance), neoliberal-metropolis (post-'Big Bang' Broadgate), right-to-the-city ("Do I have the right of passage?"), inside-outside-dialectic (the in-between zone), interiority (identity constructed in the gate's lived seconds), poche (inhabited edge-depth vs engineered un-inhabitability), disciplinary-frontiers (the frontier's "thickness" at urban scale), enclosure (the boundary of exclusion), space (spatiality as force/flow).

Authors: borden-iain (author); drawn on heavily: simmel-georg (the boundary as sociological fact formed spatially), lefebvre-henri ("in particular" — second nature, space of flows), foucault-michel (heterotopia, panopticism, self-surveillance), debord-guy (the spectacle), auge-marc (non-places, the mirror), merleau-ponty-maurice (tactility against the domination of vision), tschumi-bernard (architecture and events), harvey-david (urban-geographic lineage); editors taylor-mark-preston-julieanna.

Debates: power-and-space — adds Position H: power exercised through the thick edge's materiality and through visitor self-policing rather than physical exclusion.

Related source notes: Proximities (Taylor & Preston 2006) — the Intimus framing of interiority and the threshold; The Partition of Space (Ardener 2006) — the gate-keeping rules this chapter urbanises; Shape shifting (Taylor 2018) — the non-place's sensor gate-keeping, Borden's corporate cousin; Politicizing the interior (Teston 2018) — the non-place as "heterotopic, transactional experience"; The Society of the Spectacle (Debord 1967/2021) — thesis 4 in application; Foucault for Architects — heterotopia and disciplinary space; The Urban Process under Capitalism (Harvey 1981) — the financial-city context of Broadgate; The Metropolis and Mental Life (Simmel 1903) — the metropolitan social forms Borden's boundary analysis extends.

Direct Quotes

"Holy Trinity was now a different stage set, at once public domain and private to those seeking defensible space and their own appropriated form of illegal real estate." (p. 49)

"Clusters of homeless recomposed a niche space from layers of clothes, cardboard and classical architecture." (p. 49)

"Yet it is not so much that the building is shut off from people, but that people – particularly the homeless – are divorced from it." (p. 49)

"they have constructed a boundary of exclusion, a brutally frontal relation which physically repels the unwanted and the unwashed. It is the architecture of separation, of clear blue water between spaces and peoples." (p. 50)

"To him and other former residents of the Holy Trinity portico, this is indeed a divisive boundary, demarcating the uncrossable chasm between private ownership and public use, recent history and immediate future. Architectural boundaries like this have social effects which cannot be denied." (p. 50)

"Architecture has too often been conceived solely as the product of design intention, from which social effects simply follow." (p. 50)

"what Edward W. Soja terms the 'illusion of opacity,' by which 'spatiality is reduced to physical objects and forms.'" (p. 50)

"the essential interrelation of buildings, spaces and people is reduced to a false dualism between object and social use." (p. 50)

"more anthropologically-minded historians and theorists are now reconceptualising architecture as what I call a 'space of flows' – not as objects, but as the interrelation between things, spaces, individuals and ideas." (p. 50)

"Architecture is both produced and reproduced, designed and experienced. It is a medium not a message, a system of power relations not a force, a flow not a line." (p. 50)

"the 'boundary is not a spatial fact with sociological consequences but a sociological fact that is formed spatially.'" (Simmel, via Borden, p. 51)

"Boundaries do not cause sociological effects in themselves, but are formed between social elements." (p. 51)

"in experiencing the screen-as-object we should remember with Guy Debord that such things are also spectacles, and thus 'not a collection of images, but a social relation among people, mediated by images.'" (p. 51)

"The conception of the blue screen purely as object is then reductive." (p. 51)

"through the precise control of screen and wall in relation to the thickness of the human body, the low wall becomes too shallow for a person to sleep upon, or to sit upon for any length of time." (p. 51)

"Many similar edge-hardenings have begun to sprout up around London, where spiked windowsills, 'decorative' railings, studded flower-planters and night-time automatic sprinkler systems to 'clean' shop and office doorways are being used to repel the public from the edge of the street." (p. 51)

"the smooth surface of the blue screen is devoid of detail interest and exactly that tactility which Maurice Merleau-Ponty reasserted against the domination of vision. It deflects attention away, presenting a blank nothing to the interrogative eye. There is no occasion to linger, observe or inspect." (p. 51)

"The boundary is not a surface but a thick edge, a five metre deep in-between zone in which social relations are challenged and controlled through architectural materiality." (p. 51)

"An aesthetic enclave within the fragmented postmodern city, Broadgate contains Americanised 'fashion effect' architecture designed by Arup Associates and SOM, generating a pervasive ambience of prestige and wealth." (p. 52)

"Social difference within the 20,000 working population is accommodated, but only within a class, gender and race framework predicated on the middle class Oxbridge-educated businessman." (p. 52)

"brass rails let into the pavement signify the edge of the property line, public art like Serra's 45-tonne 'Fulcrum' signals entrances, armorial devices record the borough thresholds, and various gates denote the transition from public to private realms." (p. 52)

"Except that these are not normal gates, for even when 'closed' one can walk around their sides, a 2 metre gap being left for this purpose. The boundary here is never sealed, operating in a manner other than physical exclusion." (p. 53)

"As privatised urban space under corporate control, Broadgate in effect has no resident-owners, and everyone who enters is either a worker, visitor or trespasser." (p. 53)

"'[a]nyone can enter one of these heterotopian locations, but, in reality, they are nothing more than an illusion: one thinks one has entered and, by the sole fact of entering, one is excluded.'" (Foucault, via Borden, p. 53)

"What the Broadgate gates do is not so much obstruct horizontal movement of the body, as to challenge the visitor's self-perception as to whether they are permitted to enter." (p. 53)

"'Should I be here, and now? Do I have the right of passage?'" (p. 53)

"The gates are not just the space but the lived time of several seconds through which the visitors validate themselves in relation to Broadgate." (p. 53)

"this is the ultimate extension of the Benthamite project of surveillance, in which each and every citizen surveys and disciplines themselves." (p. 53)

"What he is confronted with, finally, is an image of himself… The space of non-place creates neither singular identity nor relations; only solitude, and similitude." (Augé, via Borden, p. 54)

"Visitors reconfigure themselves in the normative character of Broadgate, such that, as with Disneyland's staff, everyone becomes a 'cast member.'" (p. 54)

"the boundary is validated by the anthropological ritual of passing through – its presence does not act upon visitors, but is a projection outward by visitors considering themselves in relation to the architecture." (p. 54)

Open Questions

Does the thick edge generalize inward: is the door-swing zone, the vestibule, the shop threshold the interior's own five-metre "in-between zone" — and does interior design already design thick edges under other names (see the Intimus editors' framing of boundary crossing as the discipline's literal and theoretical threshold)?
The 45° deviation shows exclusion computable from the body's thickness (150 mm). Can hostile edge-hardening always be read off plan and section as a body-parameter — and can drawings be audited for it before construction?
Borden's unsealed gate and Teston's non-place both govern by self-policing ("one thinks one has entered and… one is excluded" vs the "heterotopic, transactional experience"). Are these the same mechanism at different scales — and which discipline owns the design of the self-questioning threshold?
The homeless recomposed the portico into "illegal real estate" — urban appropriation from below. Can the thick edge be designed to invite such appropriation (the sitable wall) without being engineered away by owners (the 45° deviation)? Cf. right-to-design and right-to-the-city.
Borden coins "space of flows" independently of Manuel Castells's homonymous concept of the network society — is the architectural flow and the informational flow the same "betweenness of place," or two different flows?
If the boundary is "a projection outward by visitors," who is responsible for its social effects — the designer, the owner, or the passing subject who validates themselves through it?