Redlines is a collection of interviews with editors that make today's most provocative architectural publications come to life. While architecture is traditionally concerned with buildings, materials, and scale, their importance and historical impact are recorded through words, books, and images that are often organized, published, and disseminated. Redlines seeks to understand the pedagogical and design frameworks that shape this process.

In this session, we look at Thresholds, a publication housed within the History Theory Criticism group in the Department of Architecture at MIT. 

What is the history of the publication?

Thresholds was founded in 1992 as a monthly zine within the History Theory Criticism group at MIT, and sought to strengthen communication and foster more dialogue, both within the Department of Architecture and with the larger architectural community. Speaking to the organization of the department at the time, the first editors, Leah McGavern and Alona Nitzan-Shiftan, explained the goal of the journal: “The uniqueness of Thresholds will be its ability to generate art and architectural discourse from within the school, due to the multiple seams between its diverse components. Regarding these seams as joints, rather than as dividing lines, will enrich this exchange.”

At its tenth issue Thresholds expanded into a journal, and at its 40th issue, Socio-, the editor changed its format to its current form: an annual, 200-350 page, peer-reviewed, edited volume. Beginning with issue 45: Myth, the MIT Press catalogs and distributes the journal on behalf of the department and school.

Who runs the publication?

The publication is housed within the History Theory Criticism group in the Department of Architecture. Student editors drive the production of the journal and its related events. They work with the faculty advisor, Timothy Hyde, as well as staff at the department and school in its conceptual development and production.

How often is it released?

Thresholds is published annually.

What does it focus on?

Thresholds focuses each year on a different theme that is cross-disciplinary and that the editors, together with the faculty advisor, consider a pertinent and provocative lens for contemporary discourse. The most recent theme is Scatter!, which was preceded in recent issues by themes including Myth, Workspace, Revoution!, Inertia, and others.

It is hard to speak of weaknesses following our personal experience with Thresholds, but if anything we can speak of the general problem of any disciplinary journal -- its orientation towards a specific crowd, its limited publication run, and so on.

How are the issues constructed?

Each one takes a different form, since the editors are different for each issue. That means that the compilation of work varies, the types of works and essays, the disciplines that contribute to it fluctuate from being exclusively architectural in some issues, to others where other disciplines engage architecture.

How are the editors organized?

The editors are selected following a call for editors open to all students. Students, sometimes as individuals, sometimes as pairs, prepare and submit a short abstract and a list of potential contributors. The faculty advisor and current editors review the proposals, meet with the groups, and select the next editors. The editorship rotates among the various degree programs in the department (professional, post-professional, and doctoral) allowing each issue to address and involve different topics, methods, contributors, and audiences. The overlap allows for transfer of knowledge and conversation among the editors, but also allows for a freshness and novelty of the interests and goals of the journal from year to year.

Is there any other medium to it but the printed object?

Traditionally, each issue of Thresholds is accompanied by a launch event, which could be either a conversation between authors, editors and contributors, or an exhibition of some of the work from the issue. This year, the launch event was actually a manifestation of one of the pieces in the journal which discussed the idea of the party as an architectural medium. The authors curated and designed a unique event at MIT, which served as our launch. Besides that we are also working on an online platform that will expose audiences both to the content of the journal, and to works that have not been included, as well as scattered content throughout the internet that is relevant to the topic. Like most publications, Thresholds will develop digital aspects alongside its print version.

What is the long-term goal of the publication?

Thresholds intends to pursue even further the possibilities, and the necessity, of interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary thinking. Any issue of Thresholds gives a reader a broad array of perspectives and insights, in different mediums, on various historical periods, and with diverse kinds of writing. In the current moment, when knowledge and ideas are translated rapidly and productively between fields, the journal has to reflect for the field of architecture, the consequences and potentials of other fields of activity. The articles and projects that appear in Thresholds will continue to be scholarly and rigorous, while also speculative, vivid, innovative in their thinking. The format of the journal, as with other publications in this moment of media transformations, will undoubtedly change, but it’s essential personality, as an expression of intellectual curiosity, will not.

Thresholds intends to pursue even further the possibilities, and the necessity, of interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary thinking

What weaknesses does the publication have?

It is hard to speak of weaknesses following our personal experience with Thresholds, but if anything we can speak of the general problem of any disciplinary journal -- its orientation towards a specific crowd, its limited publication run, and so on. We have, however, tried to address these with SCATTER! both in terms of the content published and the ways we went about exposing it to a disciplinary audience and beyond.

How involved is the affiliated academic institution?

The institution is very much involved in the logistical aspect of the journal; that is, it provides the institutional support that is needed, both financially and professionally to make a journal of this caliber possible. In terms of creative control, the faculty advisor gives support and advice to the editors, and plays an important role in the selection of editors.The creative freedom, however, is exclusively that of the editors and they are the ones that envision the theme, layout, structure and overall character of each issue. But it’s also important to note that Thresholds’ range of intellectual inquiry, its disciplinary curiosity, absolutely reflects the perspective of the History Theory Criticism group at MIT.

What has been the most interesting issue in your eyes so far?

Every issue of Thresholds has a unique take on the issue it sees as a pivotal orientation for the field. The breadth, scope and ambition of Thresholds 41: Revolution!, edited by Ana Maria Leon, however, is one of the most impressive and ambitious examples of Thresholds and its editorial capacity and scope. But Thresholds has published a number of essays that have subsequently proved to be important to thinking in the field. Any reader perusing back issues will notice that Thresholds has consistently published emerging scholars just at the start of their most innovative work.

What is the most recent issue focused on?

The current issue of Thresholds, titled SCATTER! Is focused less on architecture per se, and more on the various modes and manners in which the thoughts, ideas, images and other aspects of architecture are circulated. We find that there is a great and somewhat unexplored power and agency to the documents of architecture and the ways in which architecture appears in supposedly non-architectural spheres, be it its image, sound, experience or texts. We aim to expose our readers to the various ways in which architecture ‘moves’ around the world, and to encourage architects and scholars to engage with those consciously.

What is the role of publications today?

Publications can assume different roles and that is especially true for Thresholds. On one hand, the publication expresses and gives a great stage to voice some of the thoughts and issues that the student editors find pertinent, and to make those heard and read within the department and beyond. Besides, and as years went by and Thresholds gained recognition, we feel that the journal also has a role in addressing issues that are important for the discipline at large, as well as give voice to scholars, thinkers and creators that are dealing with those issues in a unique way. Today, with the proliferation of digital media and a growing number of unique and wonderful publications, Thresholds also serves as a benchmark journal in our mind; one that still takes the time and rigor to produce a significant physical object, and one that is in itself evidence of the work invested in it.

Tell us something someone would not know from turning the pages of the publication itself.

Like any publication, it is not always easy to see the amount of effort and collaboration that goes into the production of final object, and we feel that because of Thresholds’ structure, and particularly in the case of SCATTER!, this is especially true. The entire mechanism of the Department of Architecture at MIT, the support of the MIT Press, the generosity of the reviewers, contributors and advisors, the hours spent on getting every letter and every image set in the right place -- all of these are so entrenched in every page that they sometimes becomes invisible, but the journal would not exist without them.