Reciprocal performances: The (un)making of an architecture

Abstract

Over the past forty years there have been many experiments by architects into the ways 'performance' can liberate architecture from stasis. The best-known examples of 'performative' architecture have focused on the generative processes of becoming that are intrinsic to performance. This paper will argue that performance is a discursive process and so the reciprocal performances of the on-lookers and the subsequent destructive performances of degeneration and demolition may be just as illuminating as the actions and intentions of the originary performance by the architect or the parametric systems of becoming they set in place. This paper will discuss this proposition in the light of several ..