Abstract
The terms ‘Performative’ and ‘Performance’ are more and more emerging in the spatial design discourses, from exhibition, to interior, arriving to urban design. These notions are not clearly defined yet. They are characterized by a semantic width and multiple applicative possibilities. Between the different interpretations and uses of ‘performance’ and ‘performative’ in architectural discourses, this paper will focus on two main dimensions of a particular importance: The first refers to the concepts of the scenic, the narrative, and the theatrical qualities in architecture. The second relates to the ‘event-character’ of spatial interventions, and the relation between event, and soft intervention, which tackles the concept of the ‘transformative power of the performative’, which indicates to the capacity of architecture to activate spaces and processes.
Highlights
Exhibitions, pavilions and installations are all concerned with changing the performance of the existing space, and they are able to illustrate what a ‘performative-oriented architecture’ could be or mean
Architecture is invited to learn design approaches and strategies from performance-oriented spatial disciplines such as exhibition design, scenography, artinstallations, and events, with a particular focus – in this paper – on: 1) Soft interventions and the transformative power of the event-intervention, 2) The aesthetic of experiencing and the narrative approach. It is in the sub-disciplines of architecture that we can ‘rehearse’ a ‘performative understanding’ of the spatial project, in the sense of studying and designing spaces basing on performative criteria, and performance perspectives
The aim of this paper is to explore and rehearse this kind of performative analytical tool for the architectural project
Summary
The terms ‘Performance’, ‘event’, ‘to an audience’ are key-concepts that can be directly exported to the architectural and the spatial discourse. To clarify how the terms ‘performative’ and ‘performance’ can be attributed to space; we definitely should study the space as the ‘performer’, and to differentiate between ‘the performance of spaces’, and ‘the performance in the spaces’. Many publications (in exhibitions, interior and urban design) used a performance-belonging lexicon, as metaphors and analogies with the world of performance, using all the related terminology. In ‘Mettere in scena, Mettere in mostra’ (2014) (in English: ‘Exhibiting and displaying’), different contributors used a range of terms belonging to the world of performance to discuss architectural and spatial issues such as: architectural dramaturgy of the urban space, the event city, the urban scene, creative city, living architecture, media-tic space, urban dramaturgy, scenography of architects, media architecture scene, etc. Time and action, the typical characters of the spectacle, contribute today to the formation of the spaces in the city, becoming dramaturgical places of constant change [...] a dramaturgy of the urban space that includes everything, where unlike the traditional dramaturgy, in close relation with the narrative theater, the scene is set as a condition of priorities and the dramaturgy becomes a peculiar feature of the space. " [3] ‘Performance’ and ‘Dramaturgy’ can be used as a metaphor, to illustrate and clarify some ideas, but they function as analytical tools to study a spatial situation with all its spatial, social, and cultural dimensions
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