Thresholds and Encounters

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T h r e s h o l d s a n d E n c o u n t e r s / P e t e r B l u n d e l l Jo n e s

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The threshold at Ropemakers Field

T h re s h o l d s a n d E n c o u n t e r s P e t e r B l u n d e l l Jo n e s

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The entrance is the most sensitive place in a dwelling: it gives some idea of the identity of the inhabitants and of whether they want you to know about them or not. Not so long ago the window looking onto the street would display a vase, a plant set between glass and curtain, or a statue facing outwards. Even the hem of the curtain was turned inward, the best side being reserved for the street. Front doors had attention lavished on them, protected by a welcoming porch. The letter box was celebrated, the door-knocker a piece of craftsmanship: this is after all the frontier of tactile contact between the outside world and the family. Nothing was abstract, nothing done in a mean or contemptuous way. What has happened to this constructive display of ethnological expression? It is notably absent in the basic modern door with its miserable letter flap in sheet metal and industrial bell-push. Today it is a relief even to see the scrap of sticking plaster which a doctor has stuck under his bell to inform his patients of changes in his surgery hours. Lucien Kroll, 19861

Everyone knows about the idea of carrying a bride across the threshold to mark first entry to the home, but few realise

how widespread such customs have been, just as we have become oblivious to the meaning of the word threshold as container for the precious harvest on which settled life depends. Among the Kabyle of North Africa the bride traditionally had to be carried by a foreigner to intercept evil forces, and having crossed the threshold she had immediately to be seated on a bag of grain, linking her fertility with that of the fields. This was placed against the female central column of the house whose forked legs supported the master-beam, an explicit representation of the house’s conjugal function. Pierre Bourdieu’s famous account further includes a long list of customs defined by the threshold, controller of the transition between two worlds: the outer male-dominated public world and the inner feminine family one. 2 Although that example is unique in its detail, the anthropological record is full of parallel cases which show not only widespread social customs and prohibitions involving thresholds, but also that they have frequently been the sites of offerings and sacrifices. 3 Transition between internal and external worlds has always been important, so entrances have consistently been foci of architectural expression. This need has not ceased in modern times despite much denial and abuse, for we continue to differentiate between public and private, requiring markers to define where trespass begins,


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Thresholds and Encounters by Proctor & Matthews Architects - Issuu