Unfinished Thresholds Experimenting with Public Building's Agency in Hybrid Cultural Building re-design

The separation between theory and practice, academy or profession or ideas and reality varies according to the field of expertise. In medicine, for example, published research advises the daily doings of doctors, and real-life cases support academic research. In the built environment, theory and practice often separate once students complete their education. The knowledge permeability from theory to practice is eminently focused on architecture’s material reality– how it is built– and not its immaterial conception – how it is conceived. Dialogues between speculation and application are especially relevant in the case of public buildings because they embody abstract collective meanings. Public buildings are where citizens construct their common definitions of democracy, inclusion, beauty, or accessibility. Therefore, its intentional design presents opportunities to transform urban realities. Researching how theory can inform public building design could improve design's processes, results, and therefore impact in the city.

In this research, design-driven methodologies are the umbrella where methods belonging to theory and practice meet and collaborate. Combining theoretical literature review, case study, co-creation and spatial interventions and their associated tools ensure relevance and applicability to both theory and practice. Design is here the common research platform that lands the theory and abstracts the practice. Disentangling their common codes and languages will open new ways to produce productive cross-recommendations.