Borders and Breathing Spaces: The porous interfaces of urban scenography

This essay argues that scenography, or performance design, offers a valuable perspective on urban interfaces and architectural facades. It does so by discussing and analyzing a performative research project by the Dutch Platform-Scenography (P-S), a project that explored how we can engage with environments than on first sight do not seem very inviting. Firstly, the essay introduces the methodology of ‘scaling’ and ‘scoping’ (derived from Katie King’s Networked Reenactments), a mode of knowledge production that has specific relevance for a scenographic analysis of (urban) interfaces. The essay demonstrates that the perspective of scenography generates a specific sensitivity for the mundane and occasionally trivial aspects of daily life and for the material, affective, and relational ways of engaging with (urban) environments.