Thresholds in architecture: from symbolics to practical poetics and politics – with a reflection for a post-pandemic world

Human beings do produce ‘communication’ fields in order to organize space, which in the same time influences the social and cultural behavior. Thresholds remain a very primordial features with increased relevancies in contemporary societies, as symbolic, poetic, programmatic and political features, entities and tools from the scale of a state, city to the very scale of an internal space. This paper explores, categorizes, compares and elaborates the threshold in architecture - especially from traditional architecture in Kosovo - to the new digital age of virtual thresholds and cosmetic boundaries and their role of composing and configuring space within various constraints; socio-cultural customs, privacy, security, order, territoriality, status, etc., to mention few. Finally, the intention of this paper is to resonate the role of thresholds in organizing space in a post-pandemic world, where the concept of open plan is put into question by in the same time increasing the relevance of flexibility and dissolving more and more the thresholds of connecting the inside with the outside