Thesis Supervisor: Dr. Doreen Mende

Independent Reviewer: Cihat Arinc

Thesis: In Between - Exploring the Boundaries

July 2011

ABSTRACT

Boundaries refer to bounds, whether these are conceived as definite limits that severely divide one thing from another, or as bonds that bind, fasten, confine, or hold things together. That is to say, boundaries indicate divisions, as they also point to inclusions and exclusions. And the thing that they enclose is always visualized as an area, a field, a sort of a physical or even mental space.

In general, our lives are developed within physical spaces. Thereby, we say that we live in a certain country, city, or home, but we develop our activities in smaller places, such as schools, offices, working areas, parks, streets, shops, playgrounds, and rooms. These smaller places, which are
thought to be parts of larger urban or rural constructions, are usually divided and subdivided according to their special utility and position. The Dutch architect Aldo van Eyck, though, did not accept such separations. He used to say that “a house is a little city and a city is a large house,” given that both of them are “a bunch of places.” Therefore, he fervently condemned the “irreconcilable polarities” that are imposed upon, what he called, “twin phenomena:” the  part-whole, unity-diversity, large-small, many-few, insideoutside, open-closed, mass-space, change-constancy, motion-rest, orderchaos, individual-collective, etc. For van Eyck, destroying the unity of a twin phenomenon by separating it into two opposing entities – or, as he call them, “false alternatives” – is an arbitrary and tragic mistake that acts against human nature itself: after all, as he reminds us, “man still breathes in and out” and we certainly “can not breathe only one way” (1962: pp.60-63).
We can readily agree with van Eyck that the character of each space is not a matter of human scale, since “what has right-size is at the same time both large and small, few and many, near and far, simple and complex, open and closed” (1962: p.64). Still, it is hard to ignore or exceed the importance of dividing boundaries in the definition and the conception of spaces themselves.

Author: Kostas Tzimoulis