Performance Architecture

Architecture is on the brink. It is a discipline in crisis. Over the last two decades, architectural debate has diversified to the point of fragmentation and exhaustion. What is called for is an overarching argument or set of criteria on which to approach the design and construction of the built environment. Here, the internationally renowned architect and educator Michael Hensel advocates an entirely different way of thinking about architecture. By favouring a new focus on performance, he rejects longstanding conventions in design and the built environment. This not only bridges the gap between academia and practice, but, even more significantly, the treatment of form and function in design. It also has a far-reaching impact on knowledge production and development, placing an important emphasis on design research in architecture and the value of an interdisciplinary approach. Though ‘performance’ first evolved as a concept in the humanities in the 1940s and 1950s, it has never previously been systematically applied in architecture in an inclusive manner. Here Michael Hensel offers Performance-Orientated Architecture as an integrative approach to architectural design, the built environment and questions of sustainability. He highlights how core concepts and specific traits, such as climate, material performance and settlement patterns, can put architecture in the service of the natural environment. A wide range of examples are cited to support his argument, from traditional sustainable buildings, such as the Kahju Bridge in Isfahan and the Topkapí Palace in Istanbul to more contemporary works by Cloud 9, Foreign Office Architects, Steven Holl and OCEAN.

Performance ARCHITECTURE The Art and Science of Improving Organizations is a hands-on guide to real world techniques for improving performance within the workplace. This important book explores the Human Performance Technology Landscape model that was presented in the bestselling book, the third edition of Handbook of Performance Technology. Framed by the Landscape model and supported by other proven models and tools, the book provides effective structures for anyone who needs to develop their performance improvement skills and knowledge and achieve results. A cutting-edge resource, this book draws on the experiences of the authors in combination with the work of notables in human performance technology, including Geary Rummler, Don Tosti, Judith Hale, Dale Brethower, Roger Kaufman, and many others. The authors identify and demonstrate how performance at three levels (worker: individual/team, work: process/practice, workplace: organization) impacts results in organizations. They also show how to scale performance improvement activities and apply them successfully to projects or initiatives of various sizes. "This is an excellent, practical guide to the field of Human Performance Technology, communicated in straightforward language. The authors have given a broad audience access to solid, research-based methods and tools for improving the performance of people at any and all levels of organizations." CARL BINDER, CPT, PhD, senior partner, Binder Riha Associates "Performance Architecture gives you concrete ideas about how to improve performance in the workplace. Adding it to your library is a must." JUDITH HALE, CPT, Ph.D., Hale Associates

This book constitutes the refereeds proceedings of the International Conference on High Performance Architecture and Grid Computing, HPAGC 2011, held in Chandigarh, India, in July 2011. The 87 revised full papers presented were carefully reviewed and selected from 240 submissions. The papers are organized in topical sections on grid and cloud computing; high performance architecture; information management and network security.

Elements of Architecture explores new ways of engaging architecture in archaeology. It conceives of architecture both as the physical evidence of past societies and as existing beyond the physical environment, considering how people in the past have not just dwelled in buildings but have existed within them. The book engages with the meeting point between these two perspectives. For although archaeologists must deal with the presence and absence of physicality as a discipline, which studies humans through things, to understand humans they must also address the performances, as well as temporal and affective impacts, of these material remains. The contributions in this volume investigate the way time, performance and movement, both physically and emotionally, are central aspects of understanding architectural assemblages. It is a book about the constellations of people, places and things that emerge and dissolve as affective, mobile, performative and temporal engagements. This volume juxtaposes archaeological research with perspectives from anthropology, architecture, cultural geography and philosophy in order to explore the kaleidoscopic intersections of elements coming together in architecture. Documenting the ephemeral, relational, and emotional meeting points with a category of material objects that have defined much research into what it means to be human, Elements of Architecture elucidates and expands upon a crucial body of evidence which allows us to explore the lives and interactions of past societies.

Integrating Building Performance with Design shows you the importance of designing for building performance early in your architectural design process. The book offers you simple tools and exercises, along with examples of built professional work and successful student projects illustrated by more than 100 full color images to help you with your work. Topics include site, solar orientation, thermal comfort, building enclosure, daylighting, passive heating and cooling, active heating and cooling, indoor air quality, stormwater, and rainwater harvesting.

The first book to survey the use of performance by architects, Bodybuilding proposes a new counter-canon of building innovation Looking past the unbuilt utopian projects of the modernists or the postwar avant-garde, the authors of Bodybuilding delve into actually produced works of architecture fortified by performance: Arata Isozaki's dancing robot-buildings at Osaka Expo '70, Charles Moore's live-TV design sessions or Toyo Ito's staged dioramas for department stores. Since the financial crisis of 2008, which sent construction rates plummeting, young architects have embraced performance more explicitly--and Bodybuilding grounds these new practices within a century of efforts to construct or critique architecture via performers' movements and actions. Bodybuilding features more than 30 case studies, plus rare archival documentation of actions by Ugo La Pietra, Lawrence and Anna Halprin, Lina Bo Bardi and others. The book also includes essays on Ricardo Bofill's theatrical stagings in unsold apartments; Coop Himmelblau's development of bio-activated interactive objects; and Mabel O. Wilson and Bryony Roberts' production of parades to undermine architecture's racist legacies.