Mapping the Threshold: "A Theory of Design and Interface"

Author(s): Georges Teyssot

Source: AA Files , 2008, No. 57 (2008), pp. 3-12
Published by: Architectural Association School of Architecture

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 Mapping the Threshold:
A Theory of Design and Interface
Georges Teyssot

Diego Vel?zquez, Las Menifias, 1656

? Museo Nacional del Prado, Madrid

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 Mirror Image
There is an interesting parallel between the mirror represented in
Diego Velazquez's painting Las Meniftas (1656) and Gottfried
Wilhelm Leibniz's treatise Monadology (1714), the dates of which
neatly bracket the baroque period. While the centre of representa?
tion is projected out of the painting, it is at the same time repre?
sented within the frame, by the ghostly reflection of the Spanish roy?
als (Philip iv and his wife). At the back of the painting there is a point
- ideal or 'virtual' in relation to what is presented, but truly real -
which indicates the various functions of the painter, the visitor at the
door and the mirror that puts the royal family back within the play of
representation.1 There is thus a connection between the horizon of
the representation in Las Meninas and its later philosophical transla?
tion in Leibniz, for whom the monad is a 'living and perpetual mirror
of the universe'.2 For the baroque philosopher, 'nothing can limit
itself to represent only part of things', and so 'each Monad repre?
sents the whole universe'.3
It was Andre Gide who in 1893 introduced the notion of the raise
en-abyme, borrowing from French heraldry a technical term referring
to a coat of arms in a smaller shield that appears in the centre of a
larger one (thus creating an 'in-escutcheon').4 Gide in fact shifted the
definition, thinking more precisely of the rare case where the same
shield was repeated, in miniature, in the centre. The term was coined
to describe a literary effect, like the 'play within a play' in Hamlet, and
Robert Campin (Master of Flemalle),
came to signify 'any aspect enclosed within a work that shows a simi?
WerlAltarpiece, 1438
larity with the work that contains it'.5 Gide would quote pictorial ? Museo Nacional del Prado, Madrid
examples to assist him, among them The Moneylender and his Wife
(1514), a painting by Jan van Eyck's last pupil, Quentin Metsys. In
works like this, small convex mirrors would reflect things or people
situated out of the picture. Gide also referred to Las Meniftas.
The mirror is thus a specular device that multiplies and interi
orises. Such an operation can be traced in other earlier works, for
instance in van Eyck's famous painting The Arnolfini Portrait (1434),
which offers a clear analogy between vision and the mirror.6 In this
1. See Michel Foucault, Les Mots et les
Choses: Une Arch?ologie des Sciences
painting the circular convex mirror, situated at the back of the
Humaines (Paris: Gallimard, 1966), Arnolfini nuptial chamber and dominating the centre of the painting,
PP19-31; see also Yvonne Neyrat,
L'Art et l'Autre: Le Miroir dans la
Peinture Occidentale (Paris:
L'Harmattan, 1999), pp 160-64.
2. Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz, The Quentin Metsys, The Moneylender
Monadology, 1714, proposition 56 and his Wife, 1514
- in French: Emile Boutroux (ed), Mus?e du Louvre, Paris
La Monadologie (Paris: Livre de ? RMN/Gerard Blot
Poche, 1991).
3. Ibid, propositions 60 and 62.
4. See J P Brooke-Little, An Heraldic Jan van Eyck, Portrait of Giovanni
Alphabet (London: Robson Books, Arnolfiniand his Wife
1985)? PP 30? 154> cited in Lucien ('The Arnolfini Portrait'), 1434
D?llenbach, The Mirror in the Text, ?The National Gallery, London
trans. Jeremy Whiteley and Emma
Hughes (Chicago: University of
Chicago Press, 1989), p 8.
5. Ibid.
6. Craig Harbison, The Mirror and the
Artist: Northern Renaissance Art in its
Historical Context (New York: Harry
N Abrams, 1995); Paul Philippot,
La Peinture dans lesAnciens Pays-Bas,
xve - xvie Steeles (Paris: Champs
Flammarion, 1994; reprint: 1998);
Pierre-Michel Bertrand, Le Portrait
de VanEyck (Paris: Hermann, 1997);
Jonathan Miller, On Reflection
(London: National Gallery
Publications, 1998).

4 AA FILES 57

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Camera Obscura, from Athanasius
Kircher, Ars magna lucis et umbrae in
decem libros digesta, Rome, 1646
Catoptric device placed on a rotating
platform, designed by Johannes Zahn,
from his Oculus artificialis teledioptricus
sive Telescopium, W?rzburg, 1685
AA FILES 57 5
provides a perfect correspondence between the eye and the mirror.7
The eye is a mirror, but also, inversely, the mirror is an eye - the mir?
ror captures the image of things; it frames the visible by collecting
the diversity of the world into the unity of its vision. The mirror also
provides the metaphor of the gaze - of the painter, as witness to the
marriage contract, replacing or doubling the eye of God, hovering
between the couple over their joined hands, as witness to the propri?
ety of the union.8
Thus the role of the mirror in this painting is both to enclose the
space while redoubling it, and to open the space towards new dimen?
sions: by reflecting in the image the open door out of the room, it
abolishes the spatial limits between interior and exterior, or, rather,
the symbolic frontiers between a profane place and a sacred space.
It also provides the painter with a double signature - his name,
which is actually written on the wall immediately above the mirror
('Johannes de eyck fuit hie 1434O, and his image, in the form of a self
portrait. Two functions in one, both nominal and iconic, are thus
simultaneously provided: the signature of the painting and the sig?
nature for a contract (of matrimony). The convex mirror is like a seal
on this pact (for eternity), not only 'doubling* the scene, inscribing
this particular event, but also securing it against the continuous drift
of time. The mise-en-abyme effect of mirroring is of course based on a
principle of repetition, but not entirely. Firstly, nothing repeats itself
identically because the mirror, and especially the convex mirror, is a
distorting surface; and secondly, in this instance the repetition (or
the doubling) of the mirror is also a celebration of an event that hap?
7. Erwin Panofsky, 'Jan van Eyck's
pens only once, in time and in space, hie et nunc. In both cases, the Arnolfini Portrait' in Burlington
act of representation is clearly registered - the painting's role as Magazine 64,1934, pp 117-27.8.
See D?llenbach, The Minor in the Text,
image referred to by the mirror's reflection is a recording of a partic? pp 7-19; and Agnes Minazzoli, La
ular event, both as a document and as a monument (a record). Premiere Ombre: Reflexion sur le Miroir
et la Pensee (Paris: Minuit Press, 1990),
PP 51-56.
9. Bodo von Dewitz und Werner Nekes
(eds), Ich sehe was, was du nicht siehst!
Sehnmaschinen und Bilderwelten, Die
The Monadic Space: A Pure Inside Sammlung Werner Nekes, Museum
Ludwig, K?ln (G?ttingen: Steidl Verlag,
2002); and Werner Nekes (ed), Die
In The Fold: Leibniz and the Baroque, Gilles Deleuze observes that Wunderkammer des Sehens: Aus der
baroque space offers not only monads that 'have no windows', Sammlung Werner Nekes (Graz:
Landesmuseum Joanneum, Bild und
but also the devices of the camera obscura, or the catoptric box lined Tonarchiv, 2003).
with mirrors.9 As such, seventeenth-century catoptric boxes are 10. Athanasius Kircher, Ars magna lucis et
umbrae in decem libros digesta, Rome,
good examples of an internalised world, or monadic space. They 1646; see aiso Ars magna lucis et
employed different configurations of mirrors that, by extending the umbrae, in x. libros digesta. Editio altera
priori multb auctior (2nd augmented
captured scene, created the illusion of an internal space larger than
edition, Amsterdam, 1671).
the box itself. Athanasius Kircher's treatise on catoptric devices, Ars 11. Jurgis Baltruaitis, Le Miroir: Essai sur
Magna Lucis et Umbrae (1646),10 or Johannes Zahn's OculusArtificialis une Legende Scientifique (Paris: Seuil,
1978); see also, Benjamin Goldberg,
Teledioptricus (1685), describe in detail various types of reflective The Mirror and Man (Charlottesville:
machines, using either compartments composed from two mirrors University Press of Virginia, 1985).
at 60 or 90 degree angles that repeated the figures in front of them
(the smaller the angle, the more repetitions), or a box lined with mir?
rors that extended a modelled scene in all directions."
Zahn's device, the hexagonal catoptric machine, made up of com?
partments with mirror-lined dividers that had a peep-hole in the
front, combined the two. When looked through, each scene inside
was multiplied six times and appeared to fill the entire hexagonal
cabinet. The various scenes contained in this box, which typically
consisted either of gardens or architectural compositions, consti?
tuted microcosmic landscapes magically disposed as if taken out
of the drawers of a cabinet of curiosity or Wunderkammer. More 'Conclave Catoptricum' designed by
importantly, Zahn designed an architectural counterpart to the box Johannes Zahn, 1702
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 TT* X^U-i??- *?> in.
Catoptric devices, from Athanasius
Kircher, Ars magna lucis et umbrae in
decem libros digesta, Rome, 1646
Proportions of doric and corinthian
windows, from Jean-Franc^is de
Neufforge, Recueil elementaire
d'architecture, Paris, 1757-68
Johann Erdmann Hummel,
BerlinZimmer, 1820-25
? Museum f?r Angewandte Kunst,
Frankfurt
in the second edition of the Oculus Artificialis (1702); the Conclave
Catoptricum was a hexagonal room-within-a-room on top of a base
that, once entered, was lined with mirrors on every surface, except for
a band of semi-translucent material around the top of the walls that
allowed light to enter indirectly through the outer room, whilst the
ceiling was painted with clouds." Thus it appeared a perfect model of
the Leibnizian subject-as-building (the monad), divided between the
body as base (the ground floor opened through windows represent?
ing the five senses to the world) and the mind or soul, totally enclosed
and internalised but providing a gateway to the infinite beyond. The
mind, as monad, was represented as an entire world simply because,
through multiple reflections, it had the capacity in itself to represent
and imagine the whole world within its bounds*
Georg Friedrich Kersting,
In fact, for Deleuze, monadic space is 'the architectural idea [of] a Stickerin am Fenster, 1812
room in black marble, in which light enters only through orifices so ? Schlossmuseum, Weimar
well bent that nothing on the outside can be seen through them, yet 12. Hans-Dieter Lohneis, Die Deutschen
they illuminate in colour the decor of a pure inside.'13 Deleuze contin? Spiegelkabinette: Studien zu den
R?umen des Sp?ten 17 und des Fr?hen
ues to argue that, if the freestanding baroque facade presents itself as
18 Jahrhunderts (Munich: tuduv,
'an outside without an inside', then monadic interiors are 'an inside 1985)? PP 19-21; Serge Roche and
without an outside': this inside is 'pure', it is the 'closed interiority'; Pierre Devinoy, Miroirs, Galeries
et Cabinets de Glaces (Paris: Paul
'its walls are hung with spontaneous folds' of a soul or a mind.14 In the Hartman, 1956); new augmented
baroque period these two spaces of pure exteriority and interiority - edition: Serge Roche, Germain
Courage, Pierre Devinoy, Miroirs
represented in Leibniz by two vectors, one descending towards the (Paris: Bibliotheque des Arts, 1986);
physical level of bodies and the other ascending towards the meta? Genevieve Sennequier, Pierre Ickowicz,
Nicole Zapata-Aube* (eds), Miroirs:
physical light of souls - are co-existent. Pure interiority and pure exte?
Jeux et Reflets Depuis VAntiquite
riority inhabit 'a similar house' in domestic baroque architecture.15 (Paris: Somogy, Editions d'art, 2000).
However, if pure interiority and pure exteriority share the same 13. Gilles Deleuze, Le Pli: Leibniz et le
Baroque (Paris: Minuit, 1988), p 39;
dwelling one might ask if this means that monadic spaces have a rele? The Fold: Leibniz and theBaroque^
vance limited only to the baroque period. In modern times, the sever? trans. Tom Conley (Minneapolis:
University of Minnesota Press, 1993),
ing of high and low, soul and body and inside and outside refers to the
pp 27-31; curiously enough, he
baroque distinction, but is a reference that, as a fold, actually articu? illustrates this definition, not by the
lates that difference. The fold is thus the actualisation of the difference catoptric architecture of Zahn, but
by the light canons of Le Corbusier's
between 'the intimate folds that the soul encloses on the upper level' chapel in the convent of La Tourette.
14. Ibid, pp 28, 29.
and 'the creases that matter brings to life always on the outside, on the
15. Ibid,p 29.
lower level'.16 What establishes the differentiation is the Zweifalt, in 16. Ibid, p 30.
Heideggerian terms, the 'twofold' or 'differentiation of difference'.17 17. Ibid.
6 AA FILES 57
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18. For an introduction to the history
of interiors in Europe, especially in
the Italian peninsula, France, the
Germanic States, Holland, England,
Russia and Spain, see Mario Praz,
La Filosofia dell* Arredamento. I
Mutamenti nel Gusto dettaDecorazione
Interna Attraverso i Secoli dalt'Antica
Roma aiNostri Tempi (Milan:
Longanesi, 1964; new edition, 1981);
English translation, An Illustrated
History of Interior Decoration, From
Pompeii toArtNouveau (London:
Thames and Hudson, 1964, reprinted
1982); Mario Pisa, L'Ameublement.
Psychologie et Evolution de la Decoration
Interieure (Paris: Pierre Tisne\ 1964);
Mario Praz, Histoire de la Decoration
d'lnterieur-.La Philosophie de
l'Ameublement (Paris: Thames &
Hudson, 1995); Peter Thornton,
Seventeenth-Century Interior Decoration
in England, France and Holland (New
Haven: Yale University Press, 1978);
Peter Thornton, Authentic Decor: The
Domestic Interior, 1620-1920 (London:
Viking, 1984); Peter Thornton, The
Italian Renaissance Interior, 1400-1600
(New York: Harry N Abrams, 1991);
Alain Gruber (ed),L'ArtDe'coratifen
Europe: Classique et Baroque (Paris:
Citadelles & Mazenod, 1992).
19. Sabine Lietz, Das Fenster des Barock:
Fenster und Fensterzubeh?r in der
F?rstlichen Profanarchitektur zwischen
1680 und 1780 (Munich: Deutscher
Kunstverlag, 1982).
20. See also engravers such as Nicolas
Pineau, Pierre Ranson or Jean
D?mosthene Dugourc. For a history
of interior decoration and furniture
in France see Pierre Verlet, La Maison
du xvme Siecle en France: Society
Decoration, Mobilier (Paris and
Fribourg: Baschet et Co., 1966); Michel
Gallet, Paris Domestic Architecture of
the Eighteenth Century (London: Barrie
& Jenkins, 1972); Pierre Verlet, Styles,
Meubles, Decors du Moyen-Age ? nos
Jours (Paris: Larousse, 1971-72), 2 vols:
vol 1, Du Moyen Age au Louis xv\ vol 2,
Du Louis xvi ? nos Jours; Pierre Verlet,
Les Meubles Frangais du xvme Siecle
(Paris: Presses Universit?res de
France, 1982); Jean Feray, Architecture
Interieure et Decoration en France:
Des Origines ? 1875 (Paris: Berger
Levrault, cnmhs, 1988; reprint,
1997); Michel Le Moel, L'Architecture
Privee ? Paris au Grand Siecle (Paris:
Commission des travaux historiques
de la Ville de Paris, 1990).
21. Robin Middleton, 'Jacques-Francois
Blondel and the Cours d'Architecture',
in Journal of the Society of Architectural
Historians of Great Britain 18, no 4,
1959; Richard A Etlin, "Les dedans',
Jacques-Francis Blondel and the
System of the Home, c 1740', in Gazette
des Beaux-Arts, April 1978, pp 137-47.
22. Ernest Klein, A Comprehensive
Etymological Dictionary of the English
Language fAmsterdam: Elsevier
Publishing Co., 1966), 2 vols; cited in
Ellen Eve Frank, Literary Architecture.
Essays Toward a Tradition: Walter Pater,
Gerard Manley Hopkins, Marcel Proust,
Henry James ^Berkeley: University of
California Press, 1979), p 263.
23. For a parallel with British interiors see
Howard Colvin and John Harris (eds),
The Country Seat: Studies in the History
of the British Country House (London:
AA FILES 57 7
Window: Between Wind and Eye Mezieres, The Genius of Architecture:
or the Analogy of that Art with our
Sensations (Chicago: University of
Another device which would seem to offer a paradigmatic example of Chicago Press, 1990); Ed Lilly, The
Name of the Boudoir', in Journal of the
the notion of the threshold between interior and exterior is, of Society of Architectural Historians, liii,
course, the window.18 During the baroque period there is a succes? no 2, June 1994, pp 193-98; Jean
Francois de Bastide, La Petite Maison,
sion of academic treatments of the window from, for example, 1758-1763 (Paris: Gallimard, 1993);
Vincenzo Scamozzi and Sebastien Le Clerc to Jacques-Francis Jean-Francois de Bastide, The Little
House: An Architectural Seduction,
Neufforge. In the resulting pattern books, the window is represented
trans. Rodolphe El-Khoury (New York:
from the outside, and is treated under the regime of the orders that Princeton Architectural Press, 1996).
govern architecture (Doric, Ionic, Corinthian, etc).19 On the other 25. Lohneis, Die Deutschen
Spiegelkabinettc, Baltruaitis, LeMiroir.
hand, the sources for the treatment of the same windows from the In general, for images of mirrors in art,
interior require reference to the various engravings by, for example, see Katrin Sello (ed), Spiegel Bilder
(Berlin: Fr?lich und Kaufmann, 1982).
Jacques-Francis Blondel.20 These include the renderings of interior Much later, large convex mirrors were
decoration and sculpture, decorative partis, fashionable styling, sud? added by John Soane onto the ceiling
of the breakfast room in his own house
den changes of taste and the contribution not only of architects but
at Lincoln's Field in London during
also of cabinet-makers, upholsters, ceiling painters, mirror the 1830s; see Gillian Barley John
installers and curtain-makers. Soane: An Accidental Romantic (New
Haven: Yale University Press, 1999),
In the eighteenth century, therefore, there seems to be a clear sep? fig 211; Margaret Richardson and Mary
aration between representations of the interior and exterior of the Anne Stevens (eds), John Soane Architect
Master of Space and Light (London:
window. Viewed from the outside, the window remains part of the Royal Academy of Arts, 2000), fig 131.
regime of classical architecture that belongs to the orders. From the 26. Yvonne Neyrat, L'Art et VAutre, op cit,
p 163 and note 358; Sabine Melchior
inside, the window becomes a part of interior decoration, no longer
Bonnet, Histoire du Miroir, op cit, pp
tied to the rules of classicism, but orchestrated by the emerging dic? 224,237; Marc Sagnol, 'Les 'Passages
parisiens' comme Trauerspiel', in
tates of architectural propriety - distribution, convenance and bien
Benjamin et Paris, p 653. One might
seance (as defined by Blondel) - by taste and fashion.21 Accordingly, think this sentence to be a little too
the etymology of the term 'window' (a combination of 'wind' and dense and something that required
additional research. Further reading
'eye') seems to refer to what is insulated and combined: the interior helps reveal the play of words between
eye and the outside wind." The window, in this way, is not so much a Spiel, Spiegel and Trauerspiel (literally,
a 'mourning-play'): see Walter
threshold as a separator that articulates a difference: the gulf Benjamin, Ursprung des Deutschen
between an exterior formal apparatus and an interior that is being Trauerspiels (Berlin: E Rowohlt,
1928, reprinted Frankfurt am Main:
transformed by the new rules of propriety, distinction and comfort.23
Suhrkamp Verlag, 1963); English
One of the important and even indispensable items of the new trans. John Osborne, The Origin
interior decoration was, again, the mirror. From the eighteenth cen? of German Tragic Drama (London:
Verso, 1977, reprinted 1985,1990),
tury onwards, mirrors began to appear in palaces and mansions.24 pp 72-73,120-21,142-43; and Rainer
A good example was the Nordic Spiegelkabinett, illustrated within the N?gele, Theater, Theory, Speculation:
Walter Benjamin and the Scenes of
complex geometry of the ceiling of the library of the Castle of Het Loo Modernity (Baltimore: The Johns
in Holland.25 Like Leibniz's monad, and like Kircher's or Zahn's Hopkins University Press, 1991),
especially, chapter 1, 'Puppet Play
catoptric machines, the aristocratic interior was hung with mirrors
and Trauerspiel', pp 1-27, and in
which, with their reflecting images, opened up an unending, ad particular, pp 12-16.
infinitum internalised space, an endless specularity. Play and mirror
share the same root in German: spiegel (mirror) and spiel (play, or
game). During the baroque and rococo periods, with its Active per?
spectives, the Spiegelkabinett creates a theatre of illusion which cele?
brates the collective narcissism of the princely court. The resulting
abyss (the mise-en-abyme), first blurs and then ruins the mimetic
chain of (social) representations, in effect creating a Trauerspiel, a
baroque drama.26 So the aristocracy entertained itself by the multi?
plication of mirrors, a spectacle that would both nurture its own nar?
cissism and create the condition of its ultimate downfall.
Penguin, 1970); Mark Girouard, Life Stops and James Pipkin, The English
in the English Country House: A Social Country House: A Grand Tour (New York:
and Architectural History (New Haven: New York Graphic Society, 1985);
Yale University Press, 1978; reprint: Gervase Jackson-Stops, Gordon J
London: Penguin, 1980); John Harris, Schochet, Lena Cowen Orlin, Elisabeth
The Architect and the British Country Blair MacDougall (eds), The Fashioning
House, i620-ig20 (Washington, and Functioning of the British Country
dc: aia Press, 1985); John Archer, House (Hanover and London: University
The Literature of British Domestic Press of New England, 1989).
Architecture, 1715-1842 (Cambridge, 24. John Whitehead, The French Interior, Mirrors on the ceiling of the library at
ma: mit Press, 1985); Gervase Jackson op cit.; see also Nicolas Le Camus de Het Loo in Holland, 1694-1702
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Mobile electric lamp for stairwells, 1895
27. Benjamin, taking his inspiration in
part from Proust's notion of memoire
involontaire, went further, comparing
the activity of the historian with a
threshold condition - with what hap?
pens in the mind at the moment
of awakening from sleep: 'The new
dialectical method of the science of
history appears to be the art of using
the present as a waking world to which
that dream, which we call the past,
refers to in reality. Fulfilling the past
in the remembrance [die Erinnerung]
of the dream! In short: memory and
awakening are closely connected. That
is to say, awakening is the Copernican
and dialectical turning point of recol?
lection [dasEingedenken, bearing
in mind].' See Walter Benjamin,
Das Passagen-Werk, vol 1 (Frankfurt:
Suhrkamp, 1982), konvolut ki, 3, pp
491. See also, Walter Benjamin, The
Arcades Project, trans. Howard Eiland
and Kevin McLaughlin; prepared on
the basis of the German volume edited
by Rolf Tiedemann (Cambridge, ma:
Harvard University Press, 1999).
28. See Krista R Greffrath, 'Proust et
Benjamin', in Heinz Wismann (ed),
Benjamin et Paris (Paris: Les Editions
Cerf, 1986), pp 113-31.
29. Benjamin, op cit, konvolut 02a, 1,
p6i8.
30. This citation refers to a work by the
French ethnologist Arnold van Gennep
(1873-1957) whose work Benjamin was
familair with: Les rites de passage; etude
systematique des rites de la porte et du
seuil, de Vhospitaliti, de Vadoption, de
la grossesse et de V'accouchement, de la
naissance, de Venfance, de la puberte,
de l'initiation, de Vordination, du
couronnement des fianqailles et du
mariage, desfunirailles, des saisons,
etc. (Paris: E Nourry, 1909); see The
Rites of Passage, trans. Monika B
Vizedom and Gabrielle L Caffe; intro?
duction by Solon T Kimball (Chicago:
University of Chicago Press, 1961).
The Threshold as Zone
For Walter Benjamin, writing in the Passagen-Werk, the act of awak?
ening from dreams is rupture and continuity at the same time.27 This
location of the mind at the threshold between awakening and wake
fulness allows the figure of awakening to become central to
Benjamin's reflections.28 Going to sleep and waking are therefore
revealed as rites of passage in human life; perhaps the only ones
remaining in a secular society. Nonetheless, Benjamin warns:
[the] threshold must be sharply differentiated from the border. The
threshold is a zone. Change, passage, and ebb and flow are embedded in Robert Mitchell, Panoramic section of
the word schwellen. Etymology cannot prevent us from noticing these the Rotunda, Leicester Square, London,
meanings. On the other hand, it is necessary to acknowledge the immedi? 1801
ate tectonic and ceremonial context that has given the word its meaning.29
Awakening is thus not a caesura but the creation of a passage, a
door, to be crossed by an extended series of rites. It is a zone shaped
by precise tectonics, a region of cognition. Passage and peristyle,
pronaos and portal, entry and vestibule, triumphal arch, sacred and
profane: these lines, imaginary and tectonic, do not create bound?
aries but an in-between, a space in the middle.30 The form of the
threshold, as a temporal and spatial figure, is that of the 'between
the-two', of the medium that opens between two things.31
In the Passagen-Werk, Benjamin goes to great lengths to explore Lewis Cubitt, King's Cross Station,
the concept of threshold. Amongst many other things, the book offers 1850-52
a taxonomy of thresholds, as the following extract illustrates: Even the
despotic alarm of the doorbell that reigns over the apartment gains its
power from the magic of the threshold. A shrill sound announces that
something is crossing the threshold.32 For Benjamin, the possibility
emerges of a collective interior, an interiority made up of external
things, preserved as if in a formless vessel through a process of interi
orisation. A similar idea appears in Benjamin's notes, according to
which naturally, much of what is external to the individual belongs to the
collective's internal nature: architecture, fashion, yes, even the weather
are, to the interior of the collective, what sensory perception, and symp?
toms of illness or health are to the interior of the individual.33 In contrast Joseph Paxton, Crystal Palace, London,
to the psychoanalyst who wants to unmask the figures of dream, 1851
Benjaminian hermeneutics set out to reveal, in buildings, in the most
apparently utilitarian things, the emergence of everything that ties
them to dreams, that is to say to the irrational, the buried, the dis?
eased, the digested and the uncanny.34 Such an exploration estab?
31. See Jacques Leenhardt, 'Le passage
lishes a correspondence between the world of dreams and the world comme forme d'experience: Benjamin
of things.35 Thus for Benjamin the nineteenth century was constituted face ? Aragon', in Benjamin et Paris,
p 169, where he draws an interesting
not as a remote historical period but as a spatio-temporal region, a parallel between the metaphor of the
Vast intermediate zone where the aesthetic and the social have not yet passage in Aragon and Benjamin and
the ontology of finitude and of opening
assumed distinct forms'.36 To demonstrate this, he offers a topogra?
in Heidegger's Sein und Zeit. See also
phy of intermediate zones - 'the dream-houses of the collective: Winfried Menninghaus, 'Science
arcades, winter-gardens, panoramas, factories, wax museums, casi? des seuils: La theorie du mythe chez
Walter Benjamin', in Benjamin et
nos, railroad stations'.37 All these buildings, constructed in metal and Pans, pp 529-57.
glass, are spaces that create vast interiors for the collective, so huge 32. Benjamin, op cit, konvolut C3,5, p 141.
33. Ibid, konvolut Ki, 5, p 492.
that they deny the importance or even existence of their exteriors. 34. Rita Bischof and Elisabeth Lenk,
They are all interior. These spaces are the containers of the crowd: 'L'intrication surreelle du reve et de
l'histoire dans les Passages de
they enclose the collective dream. Paradoxically, the public spaces of Benjamin', in Benjamin et Paris, p 184
the collective are also internalised as a particular type of interior - - an interesting study, although one
I disagree with in terms of its conclu?
threshold spaces where the interior and exterior meet, where public
sion: Benjamin is blamed for not
and private literally find their common ground. The nineteenth cen? having contributed to a 'sociology
tury in this sense not only offers a transitional moment but is charac? of affect', p 197.
35. Ibid, p 184.
terised by transitional spaces. The public space becomes a threshold, 36. Ibid.
a space that holds together or 'contains' the flow of the crowd. 37. Benjamin, op cit, konvolut Li, 3, p 511.
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 Interior as a Facade

In the Passagen-Werk, Benjamin also turns his attention to the private

domestic spaces of the nineteenth-century apartment, describing
these spaces as a lined container and, through the similes of its inhab?
itants, as a compass casing or a shell.38 For Benjamin, however, this
casing should be considered only through the possibility of a topologi 38. For interesting references on this
cal threshold between an interior and an exterior: yes, it appears to be question see Jean-Louis Ddotte,
L'Homme de Verre:Esthetiques
a pure, protecting interieur, but the contents of this interior are also Benjaminiennes (Paris: L'Harmattan,
displayed and thus projected towards the exterior, like goods in a shop 1999); and also Hilde Heynen,
Architecture and Modernity: A Critique
window or artefacts in a museum.39 What used to be (bourgeois) interi (Cambridge, ma: mit Press, 1999,
ority - quiet, secure and intimate {die Gem?tlichkeit), a sleeping place 3rd printing, 2001).
39. For Benjamin, the nineteenth and
and a place asleep, in short an interieur - reversed itself into an exte?
twentieth centuries, more than any
rior: The interieur steps outside. It is as if the bourgeois were so sure of other, pursued the dwelling as the
mode of inhabitation {das Wohnen):
his stable prosperity that he disdains the facade in order to declare: no
The nineteenth century, like no other,
matter where you open it and cut a section through it, my house remains was addicted to dwelling. It conceived
afacade.40 the residence as receptacle for the
person, and it encased him with all
This consideration offers the possibility of the interieur being his appurtenances so deeply in the
grasped in a mirror condition, between an interior and an exterior. dwelling's interior that one might be
reminded of the inside of a compass
Such a duality, for Benjamin, could be represented by the gaze of the case, where the instrument with all
'poet of the modern city'.41 For Charles Baudelaire, the paradigmatic its accessories lies embedded in deep,
usually violet folds of velvet.' See
urban poet, there is an invasion of the (metropolitan) exterior into
Benjamin, op cit, konvolut 14, p 4;
the interior, which has two consequences - the interior becomes a Walter Benjamin, The Arcades Project,
facade, while the person in the street becomes a voyeur: op cit, p 220; and Walter Benjamin,
Paris, Capitale du XLXe Siecle, Le Livre
There is nothing more profound, more mysterious, more pregnant, des Arcades, trans. J Lacoste (Paris:
more insidious and more dazzling than a window lighted by a single can? Cerf, 1989), p 239.
40. Ibid, konvolut li, 5, p 512.
dle. What one can see out in the sunlight is always less interesting than 41. Charles Baudelaire, Le Peintre de la
what goes on behind a window pane. In that black or luminous square Vie Moderne; in Charles Baudelaire,
CEuvres Completes, vol II (Paris:
life lives, life dreams, life suffers.42
Gallimard, 1976; 1985), pp 683-724.
For the poet of the modern city, the window, seen through its 42. Charles Baudelaire, 'Les FenStres', in
bewildering exteriority, is better perceived from the outside and at 'Le Spleen de Paris', CEuvres Completes,
p 288; see Paris Spleen, trans. Louis
night. It frames the anonymous and solitary existence of metropolitan Varese (New York: New Directions:
humanity, and offers an image, an allegory, of contemporary solitude. 1947). P 77

Section of a Parisian residential

building (drawing by Bertall,
lithography by Lavielle) published
in LeDiable? Paris, Paris, 1846

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43 ? See Le Parisien Chez Lui au xixe Siecle:
1814-1914 (Paris: Archives nationales,
1976).
44. On Le Sage's preflguration of modern
transparency see ibid, pp 14-43;
and his novel, Alain-Rene.Le Sage,
Le Diable Boiteux (1707; here, the 1726
edited version), Roger Laufer (ed)
(Paris: Gallimard, 1984; reprint: folio
classique, 1999); as was customary in
that period, Le Sage drew inspiration
from a Spanish novel: Luis Velez de
Guevara, El Diablo Cojuelo (1641),
Angel R Fern?ndez Gonzalez, Ignacio
Arellano (eds) (Madrid: Editorial
Castalia, 1988).
45. Richard Blazer, Peepshows:A Visual
History (New York: Harry N Abrams,
1998).
46. See L'lllustration, 11 January 1845,
p 293; and LeMagasinPittoresque,
December 1847, p 401. See also Le.
Parisien Chez Lui au xixe Siecle, op cit.
47. Sharon Marcus, Apartment Stories:
City and Home in Nineteenth-Century
Paris and London (Berkeley, ca:
University of California Press, 1999),
PP 17-50.
48. See Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari,
A Thousand Plateaus: Capitalism and
Schizophrenia, trans. Brian Massumi
(Minneapolis: University of Minnesota
Press, 1987), p 30.
49. Ibid, p 24; see also Benjamin, konvolut
Q2,8, p 660, 'the panopticon, a demon?
stration of a total work of art'.
This phenomenon is illustrated by the famous sections through
Parisian apartment buildings that were frequently published in the
nineteenth century.43 From 1845 until 1911 an iconographic fashion
in Paris had as its theme the opening up of the immeuble block like an
anatomical body. This condition had first been announced within lit?
erature by Le Didble Boiteux (1707), a best-selling novel written by
Alain-Rene Le Sage, in which a devil was able to penetrate roofs and
walls.44 This devil was a 'nosy parker', a spy who would pry into bed?
rooms, inquisitively checking what people sleeping together might
be doing there. In the nineteenth century, the same theme, renamed
Le Didble a Paris, was illustrated by sections revealing the social life of
a building, floor by floor as if in a peep-show,45 from the plushness of a
yawning bourgeois interior to the drunkenness of bohemian artists
dancing in their garrets.46 Typical of the Louis-Philippe interieur, what
the choice of section reveals is the rigid separation of the classes,
despite their being placed together in the same structure.
While public transitional spaces had become interiors, envel?
oped either by different types of buildings such as stations, or differ?
ent networks such as the new metro lines, the Victorian (or rather
Haussmannian) interior revealed itself as a facade - cut through by Anonymous illustration from a 1759
the architect's section, exposed to everybody by the scientific gaze edition of Alain-Rene Lesage's novel,
and opened up by the intimate social literature of writers such as LeDiableBoiteux, originally from 1707
Balzac and Zola.47 The interior, in this sense, had become a reversible
surface, 'like a sock* (to borrow an expression from Deleuze and
Guattari), and could be transformed into an exterior.48 Benjamin
adds, attesting to the quasi-identity of dream and truth, that 'The
true has no windows. The true never looks out at the universe.' As
with panoramas, theatres, panopticons and arcades, 'what finds
itself in the windowless house is what is true'.49 Such dream architec?
ture thus has the structure of monadic space.
? -"'^rr . Cr^^^^^H j 1 mm
1 ?WMW^r^? W^^^^^^^H Jim HH
ifiui 1 r^l^Kiln
I? la^Bili 1 m^^^?^^HP^Ht.1 mm
Gustave Caillebotte, YoungMan at His
Window, 1875
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 Body-building
An interconnected question here might be to consider the thresh*
olds between the built environment and the body. In answering it, it
seems important to interrogate the dynamic relations between the
terms of the body and those of the world. Does a body exist? Is it a
possession or a tool? Is this body 'inhabited'? How do body and
brain interact with the world? A brief examination of our conception
of the body should similarly help us assess the effects produced by
our conception of the environment and of architecture*
The last two centuries have seen the appearance of orthopaedic
instruments that purportedly 'correct' the body by artificially prop?
ping up anatomy. The most famous, or perhaps infamous, example
of a machine operating directly on the body (and forming a body
machine in the process) was provided by Moritz Schreber, inventor
of the Schrebergarten and father of Senatspr?sident Daniel Paul
Schreber. By the middle of the nineteenth century, Moritz Schreber
developed manipulative and corrective orthopaedic apparatuses and
harnesses for children to ensure good posture while sleeping, walk?
ing and sitting. As is now well known, or at least theorised, the young Milo De Meyer, magnetic shower device,
Paris, 1894
Schreber (one of Freud's most famous patients) endured a displaced
paternal aggression through the imposition of his father's posture
correcting apparatuses, employed under the guise of hygienic auster?
ity.50 Orthopaedic therapies, however, underwent a significant trans?
formation during the later half of the nineteenth century, a transfor?
mation described as 'support-tool inversion'. Schreber's ideas were
to become, by that time, not only obsolete, but the very model of what
should be avoided. The idea of an external force operating on the
body, which received it passively, gave way to the active body which 'Ladies' Home Calisthenics', from
A Guide to Health for Women and
itself exerts force on a device or instrument. As a result, the applica?
Children, 1890
tion vector of such tools no longer operated from the exterior onto the
human body, but the other way around.
The interrelationship between bodies and machines soon found
its way into late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century art and litera?
ture* From Alfred Jarry, Raymond Roussel and Marcel Duchamp
to Franz Kafka one can see and read about no-exit fictions, non-trans?
Showerwith pedals, 1897
parent windows, two-way mirrors, mute encounters between automa? 50. William G Niederland, The Schreber
Case: Psychoanalytic Profile of a
tons and asexual couplings of androids and humans. These incestu?
Paranoid Personality (New York:
ous and painful matings between organs and machines describe The New York Times Book Company,
how the law is alternately inscribed on the body by means of social i974)i PP 49-84; Zvi Lothane, In
Defence of Schreber: Soul Murder and
machinery, disciplinary apparatus and devices from orthopaedics Psychiatry (Hillsdale, nj: Analytic
and orthopraxy. It is from these languages miming their death, these Press, 1984); and Eric L Santner,
My Own Private Germany: Daniel Paul
orthopaedic machines guiding torture, prophylactic devices sup? Schreber's Secret History of Modernity
pressing contact - 'celibate machines' - that a new engineering, a new (Princeton: Princeton University Press,
1996), pp 63-99.
'architecture' is created around prosthetic supplements. This engi?
51. Jean-Francois Lyotard, Les
neering allows for continuous transfers and ever more mutations.51 Transformateurs Duchamp (Paris:
Galilee, 1977); trans. Ian McLeod,
Body-building is thus achieved by repetitive exercises using these
Duchamp's TRANs/Formers (Venice,
devices, which now constitute gymnastic machinery.52 The body no ca: Lapis Press, 1990), pp 29-37.
longer subinits to mechanised pressure but instead exerts its strength 52. Baron Nils Posse, The Special
Kinesiology of Educational Gymnastics
on those apparatuses - apparatuses which become singularly spe? (Boston: Lee and Shepard, 1894).
cialised.53 This athletic machinery was to become a source of inspira? 53. Georges Vigarello, Le Corps Redresse:
Histoire d'un PouvoirPedagogique
tion for modernist architecture from the nineteenth century until the
(Paris: Je?n-Pierre Delarge, 1978);
1930s: furniture was conceived in an 'anthro-potechnicaP framework see also Georges Vigarello, 'Panoplies
Exercices d'education physique, like a machine upon which the body exerted its strength and exercised redresseuses: Jalons pour une
Paris, 1890 histoire', Traverses no 14/15 (April
its forces - in other words, as gym equipment; and the room was con? 1979)? PP 120-31; and Dominique
ceived like a gymnasium where one worked out. The body is also the Laty, Histoire de la Gymnastique en
Europe: de l'Antiquite ? nos Jours
focal point of a transformation of architecture through a slow but (Paris: Presses Universit?res de
potent process of the domestication and eroticisation of space. France), 1996.

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Marcel Breuer, decor for the Levi
Gymnastics Studio, Berlin, 1930
Photo Wanda von Debschitz-Kunowski
? Bauhaus-Archiv Berlin
The obvious architectural reference is Le Corbusier, who
famously drew an inhabitant boxing on a patio, or 'suspended gar?
den', on one of the duplexes of the Wanner housing project for
Geneva (1928-29): the 'machine-for-living,, then, was also a work-out
machine.54 Among the many sources attesting to the connection
between architecture and gymnastics, it is worth quoting Hannes
Meyer's 'minimal' design for a co-op interior (1926);55 the 'Chambre
en plein air* and swimming pool at Villa de Noailles in Hyeres (1928)
by Robert Mallet-Stevens (with Pierre Chareau);56 the bedroom
designed by Marcel Breuer for the apartment of Erwin Piscator in
Berlin (1927-28), equipped with a punch-bag for boxing practice; or,
again, Breuer's home decor for a gymnastics teacher in Berlin
(1930);57 and Rene Herbst's fitness room at the 1935 Brussels
International Exhibition, among other examples.58
Meanwhile, the theory of homeostatic systems was developed
in the context of the Second World War. The study of the man/
machine interface led to the generalisation of cybernetics. From
control of machines via self-regulating systems to generalisations
about the configuration of the body as an information system itself,
we have moved into sensorially stimulated environments able to
recreate the world.

In The Practice of Everyday Life Michel de Certeau Myself in the Middle belongs to a logic of ambiguity, or ambivalence:
argues that there appear to be only two types of the void of the border can turn the limit into a
limit: the frontier that establishes a legitimate crossing, a passage; or the river into a bridge.
domain around an enclosed space (that of 'priva? [Tjhat's what Ifeelt an outside and Unfolding their 'duplicity' - showing walls and
cy' for instance) and the bridge that opens space an inside and me in the middle, fences, doors and windows as the various
towards an alien exteriority. Doors and windows, perhaps that's what I am, the thing screens that organise the face and interface of
or any other threshold, however, seem to work in that divides the world in two, on our mediating with the world - can lead to inver?
either category - that is, they could be consid? sions and displacements. The door that closes is
the one side the outside, on the
ered as the markers of boundaries as well as precisely also one that can be opened.
other the inside, that can be as thin
devices that permit the bridging of space Walls, fences and rivers, in this sense, do not
towards the exterior. Separation and communi?
as foil, I'm neither one side nor create a nowhere but a somewhere: that is,
the other, I'm in the middle, places that mediate. Borders, frontiers and
cation are connected aspects, it is the former
that creates the condition of the latter.59 Like all I'm the partition, I've two surfaces thresholds are not abstract lines drawn on a
dialectical arguments, the stark choice of one or and no thickness.61 map, or dotted markings on the floor, or strings
another actually unravels to reveal a notion of Samuel Beckett, pegged out between two points. Rather, any
the 'in-between* - a 'space between', in German The Unnamable limit or border has a mediating role that per?
der Zwischenraum - which creates a middle mits communication and allows for mutual
place.60 Here in the middle the frontier loses its passage. A geographer also needs a geomancer.
sense of pure obstacle and becomes voidal and interstitial, a space The limit articulates between things and beings, between the known
where things can happen - a happening, a performance, an event or a and the unknown, the sedentary and the nomadic, the outside and
narrative, for instance, an m-cident. The 'spaces between* have the the inside. One can inhabit the inwardness and one may nurture its
power to become symbols of exchanges and encounters. As such, interiority, but only if it is understood as a surface, an exteriority that
they offer the ability to gather events that occur 'there'. The frontier always comes between world and things.

54- See Yago Conde, 'Boxing Le
Corbusier', aa Files 19 (Spring 1990),
pp 50-52.
55. Vittorio Magnago Lampugnani and
Romana Schneider (eds), Moderne
Architektur in Deutschland 1900 bis
1950: Expressionismus und Neue
Sachlichkeit (Stuttgart: G Hatje, 1994).
56. Cecile Briolle, Agnes Fuzibet and
Gerard Monnier (eds), Robert Mallet
Stevens: La Villa Noailles (Marseille:
Parentheses, 1990).
57. Walter M?ller-Wulckow, Die Deutsche
Wohnung der Gegenwart (K?nigstein im
Taunus: K R Langewiesche, 1932); now
in Hans-Curt K?ster (ed), Architektur
1900-1929 in Deutschland (K?nigstein
im Taunus: K R Langewiesche, 1999);
Magdalena Droste and Manfred
Ludewig, Marcel Breuer Design
(Cologne: Taschen, 2001).
58. Original photographic proof, Paris
cnac, Centre Georges Pompidou.
59. This is perhaps what the poet Rilke
had in mind: 'Aren't you our geometry/
window, very simple shape/ circum?
scribing our enormous/ life painless?
ly?'; see Rainer Maria Rilke, 'Windows,
in', 1927, in The Roses and the
Windows, trans. A Poulin (Port
Townsend, wa: Greywolf Press, 1979),
p 75; also cited in Suzanne Delehanty
(ed), The Window in Twentieth-Century
Art (Purchase, ny: Neuberger Museum,
1986); Rilke wrote these poems in
French; sttFenitres (Paris: Editions
des Cendres, 1983); an anthology of
texts in French on the window (Rilke, p
83-88); see also Alain Mousseigne (ed),
D'un Espace ? l'Autre: la Fenitre, CEuvres
du xxe Steele (Saint-Tropez: Le Musee,
1978); Carla Gottlieb, The Window
in Art. From the Window of God to the
Vanity of Man: A Survey of Window
Symbolism in Western Painting (New
York: Abaris Books, 1981).
60. Michel de Certeau, 77ie Practice of
Everyday Life (Irving, ca: University
of California Press, 2002), p 128.
61. Samuel Beckett, L'Innomable (Paris:
Minuit, 1953), p 196; quoted by
Jean-Louis Chevalier, 'The Door' et
quelques autres portes', in Dominique
Gauthier (ed), Les Lieux de Passage
(Pau: Faculty de Lettres, 1989), pp
119-28, esp 121. English translation
by Beckett, from Samuel Beckett,
The Beckett Trilogy: Molloy, Mahne
Dies, The Unnamable (London:
Picador, 1979), p 352.

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