TRESHOLDS
In contemporary architectural research, thresholds no longer signify fixed borders. They emerge as liminal conditions—spaces of transition, negotiation, and transformation. In the age of artificial intelligence, digital fortifications, and speculative design, thresholds become interfaces: sensitive membranes that mediate between data and desire, between the visible and the imagined
MAP OF THE UNKNOWN
These spaces are heterotopic in the sense of being ‘heterarchical’ that is, spaces subject to no overt or established hierarchy. As a denial of an intelligible centrality as well as of spaces and places, which have a predominance over others, these threshold-spaces are on the boundary between inside and outside as well as in the overlapping of different scales and dimensions.
In the age of Artificial Intelligence and the metaverse, the concept of the limit is undergoing a transformation: from physical barrier to symbolic threshold, from static boundary to dynamic space of interaction. Digital limits are no longer walls that separate, but interfaces that connect—filters, liminal spaces that modulate access and perception.
These thresholds represent heterotopic spaces, as described by Foucault: places of otherness that exist simultaneously inside and outside conventional reality. In this context, architecture becomes an act of narration—a process that explores and redefines the boundaries between the real and the virtual.
Through the use of artificial intelligence, new possibilities emerge for the creation of spaces that challenge traditional notions of time and place. The images generated are not mere representations, but visions that question and expand our understanding of architectural space.
Credits
Type: AI Architecture
Year: 2025
Architect: Cesare Battelli
AI Labs: MidJourney. Alter (Chat GPT)
