Porosity, in Benjamin and Asja Lacis’s Naples essay, concerns interpenetrations of architecture, everyday practices, and social relations. It describes more than the physical structure of walls, addressing boundaries between street and home, work and leisure, private and public life.
A courtyard serving work, play, and encounters at different times illustrates a space not fixed to one function. Architectural images must be read with forms of life. Everyday practices matter alongside a city’s plan.
Reading Lacis’s theatre practice with Benjamin’s interpretation of urban culture makes coauthorship visible. Naples should not be attributed to Benjamin alone. Lacis is a producer of the text, not merely a biographical encounter.
Porosity is neither an immutable cultural essence of Naples nor an automatically beneficial design principle. The essay records a historically situated encounter. Contemporary use must investigate for whom permeability offers possibilities and for whom it produces insecurity.