BETWEEN BOUNDARIES
JIngwen Zhang
Pratt School of Design
This thesis reimagines the boundaries between facades, sidewalks, and buildings as negotiable threshold spaces that support everyday occupation, social interaction, and belonging. Focusing on Broadway, the project proposes a rule-based spatial framework that allows landlords and businesses to adapt and reinterpret street edges through variations in form, material, and program. Rather than prescribing fixed outcomes, the system enables boundaries to expand, contract, connect, and overlap in response to changing activities and needs. By transforming in-between spaces into active sites of encounter and participation, the project explores how pedestrians can reclaim the street as a place of memory, community, and shared urban life.