ABSTRACT
Thresholds are widespread in cultural architecture, since cultural buildings usually have foyers that are freely accessible to the public. The piazza and foyer of the Centre Pompidou in Paris are iconic examples. Similarly, Álvaro Siza Vieira is recognised as a master of the design of thresholds between museum interiors and exteriors.
The SESC Pompéia Recreational Centre in São Paulo, designed by Lina Bo Bardi, exemplifies a cultural centre where most spaces are threshold spaces, thus having a major social impact. The MACRO museum in Rome, designed by Odile Decq, is a Threshold Architecture, as most of the spaces, on different levels until the roof terrasse, are public. Decq has organised visitors’ experience of the building as a series of passages through layers or envelopes, to create an architecture of freedom, constraint, and negotiation. The architecture enhances intersubjective interactions and collective events in these spaces. SANAA’s design of threshold spaces in the 21st Century Museum of Contemporary Art in Kanazawa is subtle and expands through the whole plan of the museum. For the design of the Jan Shrem and Maria Manetti Shrem Museum of Art in Davis, SO-IL follows similar subtle aesthetics to define envelopes of spaces using a complex topology.
