Deep Threshold

Stephen Bates, Bruno Krucker

Over the last eight years at the Chair of Urbanism and Housing at TU München we have been exploring
the European city, believing wholeheartedly that its density and intensity, consistency and decorum
remain relevant for the future. We have been encouraging our students to develop a greater understand-
ing of the emotive aspects of the city as much as of structure and typology.
The atmosphere of European cities is characterized by a strong connection between the urban
residential typology and the street. There is a resonance between buildings and the spaces between them.
In the best examples, the public character of urban space infiltrates residential buildings through deep
thresholds, courts, and arcades. The buildings themselves offer something back to the city in the form of
porches, loggias, and canopies. In this way, the private domain and the public character of urban spaces
that surround it are locked together in a beautiful way. These spatial relationships are at the heart of the
European city.

In a series of design studios, we have been exploring how it may be possible to integrate the shared
moments we experience in the city in the organization of a building by designing proposals that ensure
that semipublic space infiltrates the building. At the early stages of the semester, the students undertake
an exercise we call found moments, which invites them to speculate about the possible atmospheric
­character of these interstitial spaces. They are asked to consider potential spatial moments that could be
incorporated in their future design, spaces that feel familiar to them from their own experience of living
in a European city: places of interaction with neighbors, off-street semiprivate spaces, places which offer
views of the streets below. The only proviso is that they must be able to gain access to the space they select.
Having made their choice, students survey the space and photograph it very carefully, paying
attention to the light level and composition. They are then asked to produce a model of the space at a
scale of 1:10 based on a print of the photograph they took. The purpose of the exercise is to accurately
re-create everything that can be seen in the print. A variety of materials and finishes are employed to
­accurately represent the space, and this necessitates sampling and testing to ensure that the scale of
materials, their texture, and the lighting conditions result in an accurate equivalent of the space origi-
nally selected. They then photograph the model from the exact viewpoint the first photograph was taken
from. Forensic care is taken to re-create the lighting levels and atmosphere captured in the initial photo-
graph. The results, some of which are presented here, are powerfully evocative images poised on the edge
of reality, with an emphatic focus on the atmospheric quality of these threshold spaces.
By this disciplined attention to looking, making, matching, and representing the students are
brought into an intimate exchange with the powerful potential of these transitional spaces. These sceno­
graphies describe the inhabited spaces and thresholds that witness and enrich our everyday existence—
courtyards, passages, stoops, porches, lobbies, porticoes, arcades, projecting canopies, and hovering bal-
conies mediate between the public and private realms—they belong to the structural envelope of private
buildings and are at the same time part of the public face of the city. They help define the character of
the city, its scale and material, and enrich the lives of its inhabitants.
By selecting existing spaces which comply with conventions of urbanity and decorum, students
are prompted to reflect on the status of these spaces when they were originally created. The dramatic
shift that has taken place since the 1970s, with the public realm being privately appropriated as a caution­

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ary tale and we deliberately focus attention on semiprivate, semipublic spaces that should be designed
with care and given material and spatial richness that reflects their importance.
The relevance of such in-between spaces is both in their seeming ordinariness and in their deep
significance. The images that follow lack any overt authorship, suggesting modesty, though that is far
from what is experienced when one has direct contact with these spaces. The images are staged and 70

­emotionally charged, with an implicit narrative that emerges from an understanding of conventional 71

codes of place-making, whether domestic or institutional. They also display aspects of the picturesque
in that they are constructed and charged with emotion by a narrative mise-en-scène.
Through this exercise, students are then prompted to consider how these images could influence
their own work in designing spaces. In contrast with the received image of architectural practice as an
incessant series of experimentations whose value lies in abstract novelty and technical virtuosity, these
images refer to the historical experience of architecture and to the elements that define its specificity as
a practical activity, a cultural specialization and an atmospheric experience. We hope such a sceno-
graphic approach will hone each student’s personal craft, but also encourage them to give something
back to the city as a gift, placing urbanity and generosity at the center of architectural discourse.

pp. 72–75: Models of threshold spaces in Munich at 1:10 scale

by students of Studio Krucker Bates at the Technical University of Munich
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73

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75

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