Boundary Play

Abstract

In this essay, the author introduces the concept of “boundary play” as it is manifested in and through interactions with space. Cultural, categorical pairings of concepts—and the classificatory systems that they are part of—are embedded in and evoked by the features of our environment. Accordingly, the ways we define and use space are rife with the possibility of boundary play, that is, the visible, imaginative manipulation of shared cultural-cognitive categories for the purpose of amusement. The discussion focuses on three analytical opportunities: (a) children playing in and around a cagelike dog crate, (b) the design solutions found in the Dutch architect Rem Koolhaas’s McCormick Tribune Campus Center at the Illinois Institute of Technology, and (c) an interactive design project called Tableportation by Giorgio Olivero and Peggy Thoeny. These examples each reflect and encourage our explorations of classificatory boundaries. In the process, they reveal this particular kind of play as well as the worldview that lies behind it.