On Thresholding as a design-driven inquiry starts in and on Bruges as a touristic city. It is a portrait of the contradicting conditions of a touristic destination: the nostalgia for the past and the pace of the present; the city for inhabitants and the city for strangers.
The mechanisms of tourism and heritage protection are the two trends dividing the space in touristic cities into two polarities: the front and the back side, the front being what is considered culturally valuable and attractive for visitors, and the back constituting all that is necessary for tourism industry but hidden from view and the parts of the city that remain undiscovered by them.
This designerly exploration considers tourism not as a remote, invasive phenomenon, but as an inherent trait of the city which intertwines with its interior life and a reflection on how to incorporate it in the public realm. The phenomenon of strangers from various countries and backgrounds coming together to one place is interpreted as an unexcavated potential, which can be uncovered by creating civic spaces on the threshold of the front and the back.
The inquiry into thresholds is a design-driven exploration of their social and spatial capacities. It is carried out with a constant shifting of focus between the whole and the fragments: the city fabric and its thresholds, discovering ways in which the two can influence each other.