Architecture Crossing Borders. The Liminal Space where Cultures Dialogue by Design

The contribution questions the spatiality of migration, mobilizing the perspective of architectural design research and practice. On the one hand, several design positions address the critique of nation-state and colonizing regimes by making visible its socio-spatial effects on migrant bodies, border communities and cross-border ecologies. On the other hand, design endeavors aim to trigger socio-cultural inclusion, interaction and exchange when negotiating with urban transformations shaped by migration. More than moving across places, this contribution seeks to frame migration as a profoundly transformative agent for the nature of places. Focusing on Gorizia (Italy) and Nova-Gorica (Slovenia) as a cross-border context at the crossroads of past and present European migratory flows, this chapter explores how architects and spatial practitioners dealt with the transformation of the place by challenging spatial ordering while experimenting with the design of spatial and temporal thresholds. Framing the case studies’ inquiry on the category of the liminal, namely “between and betwixt”, this research combines qualitative architectural research methods and techniques (such as multi-scalar spatial and temporal analysis, site survey, mapping, synthetic drawing) with mixed methods (such as archival research) to investigate multilingual primary and secondary sources and to shed light on the processes of cross-cultural spatial perception, representation and imagination. The selected design projects and practices creatively embraced friction, uncertainty, suspension, and crisis. Despite being often unfinished, destroyed, or demolished, they offer a laboratory of design experimentation to foster spatial belonging and temporal becoming at the intersection of social, cultural, linguistic and political boundaries and borders. By transgressing its disciplinary boundary, architecture can unfold the mutual processes of shaping and reshaping people-to-place linkages in diverse contexts, thinking and making room for the dialogue between cultures by design.