STOREFRONT

Kees Christiaanse, being the curator of the 2009 International Architecture Biennale, is the person who got us thinking about the Open City in the first place, so it's no surprise that he has much to contribute to this Arsenal of Exclusion / Inclusion. Rereading [limited access] or the open city for my Open City seminar, I was reminded of the clairty of the Chinatown example. Christiaanse writes: ". . . although a Chinatown in an occidental city is a concentrated, closed community, at the same time she open her doors for others through commerce and gastronomy in her active street fronts. She has no fixed borders but overlaps and interacts with other communities that settle in the open system."

The emphasis in the passage is really on how the condition of the Open City is achieved through a balance between open and closed, but here I want to appropriate it, and use it as evidence that "store front" deserves a place on our Arsenal of Inclusion.