Public/Private Interfaces

Abstract

The urban interface between public and private space has long been an issue of great concern in urban design, planning and architectural theory - the myriad ways in which the transition from public to private space is framed, formed, negotiated and governed. The interface has been of particular concern to social critiques of built form because this is a primary site of transition from private to public selves and vice versa; where friends and customers are greeted and farewelled; where identities are constructed (the entry foyer, front door, front garden); where goods are displayed and exchanged (the shop window); where social activity occurs in interstitial space (front porch, alfresco dining); where safety is established both with boundaries and with 'eyes on the street'. Some functions are strongly identified with particular types of public/private interface. The public shopping strip is largely a repetition of transparent shopfronts, just as the suburb is a repetition of garden setbacks. Other parts of the city are not so uniform nor easily categorised and the issue has become more complex through the proliferation of quasi-private space within private shopping malls, housing estates and so on. The broad research question here concerns the relationship of the private building plot to the street: how does private space plug into public pedestrian networks? The first goal is to develop an interface typology that may be useful for mapping, analysing and designing public/private interfaces. Second, we seek to understand practices of innovation, adaptation and transformation from one interface type to another. In order to meet both these goals we deploy forms of thinking that resonate with early attempts to articulate these issues, such as Jacobs, Alexander and Lynch, and with the assemblage theories of Deleuze and Guattari (1987). The broader goal is to enable a more rigorous and robust discourse on interfaces to emerge in both theory and practice. The chapter raises questions about the methodology and ontology of micro-spatial analysis in urban research, as well as the importance of interface connections to urban production, exchange and innovation.