Constructing barricades and creating borderline events

This article articulates how an expanded conception of scenography is capable of critiquing our built environments in order to disclose architecture’s role in reinforcing power structures, socially sanctioned behaviours and geopolitical cartographies. By adopting a ‘broad spectrum approach’ we are able to recognize that those constructing our world – the architects, planners, engineers, builders, technicians, manufacturers, suppliers and politicians – tend to be complicit in spatially suppressing our motility, flexibility and expressivity. Scrutinizing our contemporary borderline condition, alongside constructed and deconstructed barricades created by artists, designers and architects, unearths a critique of how our public performances are limited and controlled. Positing the barricade as an architectural and social formation allows us to consider its shifting political implications seen in public artworks that are aligned with Rubió Ignaci Solà-Morales’ concept of ‘weak architecture’ as a productively scenographic approach to spatial analysis and its mediation.