Urban P.E.T.s.: Urban Public Embedded Thresholds

Abstract

Urban PETs is a proposal centered in the way architecture as a mediator can find its place in our contemporary world, hugely defined and configured by interfaces. Within this concept PETs are a new kind of hybrid, digitalized, spatial, urban interface. They are, to be exact, urban Public Embedded Thresholds. Common digital interfaces connect human subjects to the digital code and allow us to interact with the distant and the asynchronous. But they are not habitable; they are surfaces or objects, not surroundings, not spaces that enfold the subjects. Common architectural interfaces are spaces that enclose subjects and permit them to control, relate and connect to their immediate surroundings, a wall, a door, a window, a roof, a threshold, etc. But their range of connectivity is restricted; they don’t allow distant, far-off nor asynchronous connections. Urban PETs are hybrids of digital and architectural interfaces, or better still, in-betweens, porous thresholds. PETs are articulations of digital and physical experiences in a new merged condition, where there is no need for alternation, where there is fusion and expansion, where the environment is augmented and interconnected and where the corporeity is reconciled with the virtual. Urban PETs provide embedment; they host specific, tailor-made software applied in concordance with their physical characteristics. These new thresholds are embedded, in other words they operate like beds for placing specialized software which augments their connectivity and dilate their limits, in the way dreams expand our reach, but, at the same time, without transgressing the physical limitations of the proper bed or denying the accommodated body’s comfort. Urban PETs are public; embedding digital public space to the physical public space can prove to be beneficent for both. Limits and thresholds between public and private can remain operative but at the same time open source strategies can apply beyond spatiotemporal limitations. The attributes of the digital public space, instantaneity, and ubiquity can, in the case of hybrid public spaces, be combined with emplacement. Physical public space’s borders and thresholds can be active and can lead to rich, diversified experiences without inhibiting and reducing the connectivity and openness. Urban PETs are urban; they refer to the city and acknowledge the needs of the contemporary citizen. They shape hybrid urbanities that can offer physical proximity, sense of belonging and community and, simultaneously, allow connections among communities and collectivities, widen the horizons and dilate the restrictions. They aim to revive urban, city spaces and at the same time to transform villagers of the globe to citizens of the world, i.e. cosmopolites. Urban PETs are a condition for encounter and coexistence but more importantly, an autonomous articulation. They are an independent, porous inbetween, which operates as a dilated interface, a connectivity medium, and an enfolding, embracing, habitable condition, i.e. a hybrid, new kind of threshold.