The paper attempts to understand and argue for the incredible social and political agency of the architectural threshold. While the interest in the threshold is certainly commonplace in architectural discourse and theory, and thoroughly explored, it nevertheless remains a fundamentally important topic in architecture. Moreover, in the current social and political climate, where ideological echo-chambers are becoming increasingly impenetrable, exposure to difference is not only productive, it is critical to a functioning democratic society.
Through the study of three key texts concerning the architectural threshold as well as a critical formal analysis of the tenement stoop and the antebellum porch, it is the hope that we may discover how, and in what ways, the architectural threshold can wield incredible agency in our everyday lives….
