Twelfth International Conference on The Constructed Environment

Abstract

I examine the nature of threshold spaces, individual buildings or architectonic environments that bridge two or more distinctly different spaces. I do so by using the Dubai Frame as a case study, making the following arguments: Threshold spaces are examples of heterotopic spaces of juxtaposition exist as transitional environments that have the ability to “juxtapose in a single real place several emplacements that are incompatible in themselves” (Foucault, 1998, p.191). I argue that the Dubai Frame functions as a threshold space between old Dubai, and new Dubai in the following ways: First, as a threshold between the regional and the global. Old Dubai functioned as a regional entrepôt that drove the city’s economy well into the 1990s, before Dubai refashioned itself as a global city, in the global political economy of flow. Here the Dubai Frame functions as a threshold between the global and the local, embodying the localized tension that results as a function of globalizing processes. Second, as a threshold between the formal and the informal. I have previously discussed Dubai’s project to contain urban informality through smart city technologies. This project also includes the design of spaces that prevent informal behaviour. The Dubai Frame thus marks the transition from informally organized and dense enclosures, to a highly formal and visually clear environment. Third, as a threshold between the knowable and unknowable. Here the Dubai frame functions as a threshold between around opaque and ill-disciplined enclosures, and a formal architectonic environment that enables high levels of disciplinary surveillance.