'Liminal Space' : 2023 Winter School Workshop

COURSE : Field Research and Documentation_Cultural Resources of Urban Environment(II) / PNU

CAMPUS_Asia::SUAE_Asia Program is an intensive international academic exchange program between universities in Asia as the platform for dual degrees between the Architecture Department of Kyushu University(KYU), Tongji University(TJU), and Pusan National University(PNU). This collaboration aims to enhance the education of urban and architectural environments by developing knowledge and skill to achieve sustainable cities and buildings in Asia . The program is also a Korea UNESCO ESD(Education for Sustainable Development)'s Official Project assigned by the Korean National Commission of UNESCO. CAMPUS_Asia::SUAE_Asia Program currently extends the platform covering Asian countries, focusing on present urban and architectural issues and enlarging educational opportunities to promote resiliency and sustainability in architectural design. It also promotes accessibility and inclusive urban design and development , which are being ardently addressed in UNESCO events, outcomes, and publications. The world demands greater cooperation and diversity. Therefore, society, cities, and people need to be adequately responsive to the direction of how the world is moving. Throug a wide range of activities, such as Summer and winter school design workshops, CAMPUS_Asia::SUAE_Asia Program promotes opportunities for exploring adequately responsive alternatives to the existing urban and architectural environment through cooperative cooperation between students from various countries.

Topic of 2023 Winter Workshop : Cataloging Urban Liminal Spaces

The term 'Liminality' was initially used by pioneers during the 20th century, such as an ethnographer Arnold van Gennep, an architect Aldo van Eyck, and cultural anthropologistictor Turner. All these modern thinkers described 'liminality' as a state of 'in-betweenness.'However, it is in Georges Teyssot's "Aldo van Eyc’s Threshold: The ́ Story of an Idea"(2008) where 'liminality' and 'in-betweenness' were first articulated in architecture(Sarah AlShrbaji,2020). Amid the traditional, dichotomous categories of interpretation of the urban environment where spaces are only understood as center/periphery, urban/rural, open/closed, abandoned/lived, public/private, the concept of the 'liminal space' often found to be idiosyncratic.

'liminal space' implies being blurred into each of the other spaces or can sometimes be porous and fragmented spaces with many different possibilities of its usage. Its borders are not always one-dimensional but more often bi-dimensional or even three-dimensional if we also consider the temporal dimension as one of the peculiar features comprising the characteristics of the space.(Paola Pittaluga,2020). 'Liminal space' can be seen as transitional spaces between different parts and marginal spaces, as Kevin Lynch wrote in Urban Image. This kind of marginal space intersects two areas or spaces with different functions and spatial textures. Differences in the attributes of the peripheral areas of marginal space lead to the distinct features of marginal space, characterized by heterogeneity, intermediary, publicity, and hierarchy (Shunzhe Pei,2020).

The characteristics of public space and the meaning of trivial small places in the contemporary city could not be explained readily through the existing discourses of publicness. Otherwise, the idea of 'liminal space,' or 'liminality,' has been widely used for various cultural phenomena and spatial experiences as a valuable tool to describe the fluid and hybrid attributes of public spaces in the contemporary city. Addressing public spaces bolstered with a concept of 'liminal space' can be examined through the literature such a transaction(Montgomery,1998), osmotic properties (MacCormac,1983), triangulation(Whyte, 1980), by-product(Hiller), third space(Soja, Anderson, 2002), lived space(Lefebvre,1974) and so on.

On behalf of CAMPUS_Asia::SUAE_Asia, the 2023 Winter School workshop pleasantly invite the Vienna University of Technology from Austria, the School of Architecture of Syracuse University from New York, and the University of Palermo from Italy as our guest partner universities. We also invite Oita University from Japan as special guest partner university at this winter. Winter School workshop committee kindly asks participants to investigate valuable liminal spaces be used as active/lived places and catalog each city they live in -New York, Palermo, Vienna, Shanghai, Fukuoka, and Busan - as workshop activities. For the search for liminal spaces in these cities, students from Pusan National University in Korea, Kyushu University in Japan, and Tongji University in China will cooperate with students from guest partner universities during Workshop. Meanwhiles, we welcome students from abroad universities who will visit PNU during the workshop period. They can participate in the teams investigating Busan Metropolitan City with students from PNU. Every proposal will be included in the official 2023 Campus Asia publication , and your contribution will be acknowledged.