BBARK - Issue 3: Special Issue: On Mobility, Power, and Exclusionary Design

Imagine a doorway that makes you speed up. A bench that quietly tells you to move on. A strip of tape on the floor that suddenly reorganizes how strangers share a room. Before we “think” about these things, we feel them — and we adjust. This issue is about those small, everyday moments where space choreographs behavior. It is also a special issue of the BBAR newsletter. All three featured papers — and the book review — come from Professor Ole B. Jensen, and we have included an extended interview with him as well. Ole B. Jensen is a Professor of Urban Theory and Vice-head of department for research at the Department of Architecture, Design and Media Technology at Aalborg University. What makes Ole’s work particularly interesting for an architecture–behavior audience is his route into the field. He is trained as a sociologist, but has spent his career working closely with architects, planners, designers, and engineers. That collaboration shows in the way he describes himself: he is interested in theory, but he keeps returning to concrete situations — doors, platforms, queues, airport terminals, metro systems, sidewalks, and the “life between buildings. His research asks how planning, technology, design, and politics set the frame for what can be done — and for who. Across the three papers in this issue, Jensen gives us a vocabulary for reading mobility spaces as behavioral environments. In “‘Watch the closing doors’- material interpellation, mobility affordance, and passenger sensations.“, the focus is on how thresholds and interfaces (like doors, barriers, signage, and timing) don’t merely organize flow — they address us, nudging bodies into roles: hurry, wait, keep moving, don’t stop. In “The Bench-Exploring exclusionary design through arts practices“, the attention shifts to public furniture and exclusionary design: how seemingly minor details can remove the possibility to rest, linger, or belong, producing a subtle “atmosphere of rejection.” And in “Pandemic disruption, extended bodies, and elastic situations—Reflections on COVID-19 and Mobilities.“, COVID-19 becomes a kind of x-ray for public space, revealing the social rules of proximity and how quickly movement patterns can be rewritten through cues, norms, and risk awareness. To round out the issue, the book review steps back and looks at pandemic life as a broader societal condition — not only what happened, but how everyday routines, responsibility, and co-presence were reorganized. And in the interview, Ole reflects on the long thread running through his work, in which mobility is not only about getting from A to B — it is about how cities live, but how access is also designed, and how small spatial decisions can quietly decide who gets to be part of the “public. We hope you enjoy this special issue — and that you’ll find yourself noticing the next door, bench, queue, or threshold just a little differently.