Architecture as a Performing Art

by Gray Read, Marcia Feuerstein, Eamonn Canniffe

Overview

How do buildings act with people and among people in the performances of life? This collection of essays reveals a deep alliance between architecture and the performing arts, uncovering its roots in ancient stories, and tracing a continuous tradition of thought that emerges in contemporary practice. With fresh insight, the authors ask how buildings perform with people as partners, rather than how they look as formal compositions. They focus on actions: the door that offers the possibility of making a dramatic entrance, the window that frames a scene, and the city street that is transformed in carnival. The essays also consider the design process as a performance improvised among many players and offer examples of recent practice that integrates theater and dance.

This collection advances architectural theory, history, and criticism by proposing the lens of performance as a way to engage the multiple roles that buildings can play, without reducing them to functional categories. By casting architecture as spatial action rather than as static form, these essays open a promising avenue for future investigation.

For architects, the essays propose integrating performance into design through playful explorations that can reveal intense relationships between people and place, and among people in place. Such practices develop an architectural imagination that intuitively asks, 'How might people play out their stories in this place?' and 'How might this place spark new stories?' Questions such as these reside in the heart of all of the essays presented here. Together, they open a position in the intersection between everyday life and staged performance to rethink the role of architectural design.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781472411341
Publisher:	Ashgate Publishing Ltd
Publication date:	05/28/2013
Series:	Ashgate Studies in Architecture
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
File size:	29 MB
Note:	This product may take a few minutes to download.

About the Author

Marcia Feuerstein, Virginia Tech, USA and Gray Read, Florida International University, USA

Gray Read, Alberto Pérez-Gómez, Lisa Landrum, Paul Emmons, Carolina Dayer, Sarah Bonnemaison, Peter P. Goché, Timothy Gray, Melli Hoppe, Ann Marie Borys, Tracey Eve Winton, Louise Pelletier, Christine Macy, Beth Weinstein, Marcia Feuerstein.

Table of Contents

Contents: Introduction: the play’s the thing, Gray Read; Part I Designing Performance: Architecture as a performing art: two analogical reflections, Alberto Pérez-Gómez; Performing theoria: architectural acts in Aristophanes’ Peace, Lisa Landrum; Toward performative architectural drawing: Paul Klee’s enacted lines, Paul Emmons and Carolina Dayer; Performing the modernist dwelling: the Unité d’Habitation of Marseille, Sarah Bonnemaison; Staging: making a scene, Peter P. Goché; Salvaged layers: a collaborative site-specific performance, Timothy Gray and Melli Hoppe. Part II Performing Design: Through the lens: image and illusion at play in the ideal city, Ann Marie Borys; The satyric scene: Palladio’s Villa Rotonda, Tracey Eve Winton; Performing architecture: from medieval festival to modern-day carnival, Louise Pelletier; The political street theatre of Basel’s Fasnacht as an agent of social change, Christine Macy; Turned tables: the public as performers in Jean Nouvel’s pre-performance spaces, Beth Weinstein; Theatrical doubles: the affecting presence of Oskar Schlemmer’s wall designs, Marcia Feuerstein; Paideia: theatre of discussion, Gray Read; Bibliography; Index.