2022 | Journal | Co-Editor | Collaborators: Meriam Soltan, Ardalan SadeghiKivi, Antonio Pacheco

Thresholds is the annual peer-reviewed journal by MIT Department of Architecture. The milestone 50th issue provided the opportunity to publish new articles in addition to significant contributions from previous editions. These past articles were reinvented through a system of annotations and conversations by both their authors and newer commentators. Please see below for an excerpt from the editor's note.

What is a moment in time if not a marker between past and present? We might be surprised to find that what comes before and what follows any given instant are often not so different from one another—time and events have a way of finding a certain consistency, a rhythm and flow that can tend to resist change. But then, suddenly, all hell breaks loose. The power goes out; dams break; tires go flat; governments collapse. To quote a statement famously attributed to Vladimir Lenin, “There are decades where nothing happens; and there are weeks where decades happen.” Meant to reference the punctuated equilibrium of history and to give primacy to the chaotic tumult of revolution, it bears noting that inflection points can happen by other means as well. For Thresholds 50: Before | After we parsed history for subtle moments of massive change, for instances where the beginnings of upheaval and long-running transformations might be found. Our goal? To look at a collection of in-between moments that hint at the future and remind us that the past is sticky, persistent, and, in many ways, always with us.

Available at MIT Press.