Architecture As A Performing Art

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.

The career and work of the Australian architect John Andrews, illustrating the practice of architecture as it really is... from getting the job to the completion of a building.

Why does live performance continue to engage us? In a world saturated with recorded entertainment, we seek out the intimacy and immediacy of live music and theater. What is the relationship between design and the experiences, perceptions, and memories it engenders? At its best, architecture, a collection of elements - some apparent, some hidden - shapes and intensifies the process and experience of performance. Set Pieces pairs the words of leading artists and critics with details showcasing the design and inner workings from projects by Diamond Schmitt Architects for some of the world's most remarkable performing-arts buildings. The book provides an immersive study of sixteen design elements that enhance and transform the perception of performance - and evoke experiences that surpass visual understanding. In-depth documentations of David Geffen Hall at Lincoln Center, New York, Theater an de Parade, Hertogenbosch, National Arts Centre, Ottawa and others A photo essay looks at the backstage world of these famous halls Exploration of the unique typology of performing arts buildings from various angles

This Design and Development Guide is an essential book for those who are involved in the initiation, planning, design and building of facilities for the various performing arts, from local to metropolitan locations. It includes the stages in the development, decisions to be taken, information requirements, feasibility and advice necessary in the design and development of a new or adapted building. Part one of this guide provides the background information about the organisation of the performing arts, the prevailing issues, the client and various building types. In the second part, the author deals with the components of design and development, identifying the roles of the client, advisors and consultants, the stages to be achieved, including client’s proposal feasibility, the process of briefing, design and building and eventually hand-over and opening night, with a consideration of the building use. Studies include the assessment of demand, site requirements, initial brief, building design and financial viability. Information requirements, as design standards, for the auditorium and platform/stage, and the support facilities, are included. Separate studies focus on the adaptation of existing buildings and provision for children and young persons. THE CONTENT COVERS A WIDE RANGE OF PERFORMING ARTS (CLASSICAL MUSIC, POP/ROCK, JAZZ, MUSICALS, DANCE, DRAMA) AND PROVIDES INFORMATION ON EACH AS AN ART FROM AND NECESSITIES TO HOUSE PERFORMANCES.

"Entre" is the Portuguese word for "in-between". Yet it conjures up in the Romance language, connotations that far exceed its English equivalent. Indeed the "in-between" is physical, spatial, temporal: a more abstract and far reaching notion, that holds the true essence of the work explored in this book. In retaining the Portuguese term in this new English edition, Entre signals both Vazio S/A's indebtedness to Brazilian culture and also attempts to maintain intact this original notion, for which, strikingly, there seems to be no satisfactory English translation.

If the city is the theatre of urban life, how does architecture act in its many performances? This book reconstructs the spatial experiments of Art et Action, a theatre troupe active in 1920s Paris, and how their designs for theater buildings show how the performance spaces interacted with actors and spectators according to their type.

Over the past two decades, the arts in America have experienced an unprecedented building boom, with more than sixteen billion dollars directed to the building, expansion, and renovation of museums, theaters, symphony halls, opera houses, and centers for the visual and performing arts. Among the projects that emerged from the boom were many brilliant successes. Others, like the striking addition of the Quadracci Pavilion to the Milwaukee Art Museum, brought international renown but also tens of millions of dollars of off-budget debt while offering scarce additional benefit to the arts and embodying the cultural sector’s worst fears that the arts themselves were being displaced by the big, status-driven architecture projects built to contain them. With Building for the Arts, Peter Frumkin and Ana Kolendo explore how artistic vision, funding partnerships, and institutional culture work together—or fail to—throughout the process of major cultural construction projects. Drawing on detailed case studies and in-depth interviews at museums and other cultural institutions varying in size and funding arrangements, including the Art Institute of Chicago, Atlanta Opera, and AT&T Performing Arts Center in Dallas, Frumkin and Kolendo analyze the decision-making considerations and challenges and identify four factors whose alignment characterizes the most successful and sustainable of the projects discussed: institutional requirements, capacity of the institution to manage the project while maintaining ongoing operations, community interest and support, and sufficient sources of funding. How and whether these factors are strategically aligned in the design and execution of a building initiative, the authors argue, can lead an organization to either thrive or fail. The book closes with an analysis of specific tactics that can enhance the chances of a project’s success. A practical guide grounded in the latest scholarship on nonprofit strategy and governance, Building for the Arts will be an invaluable resource for professional arts staff and management, trustees of arts organizations, development professionals, and donors, as well as those who study and seek to understand them.

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.