Essay: The Performance of Space

„The Performance of Space“, in: Goethe Institut (Hrsg.), Projekt Weltstadt – Who creates the city?, Issue 2 Belgrad, München.

Ausschnitt aus dem Essay:

The Performance of Space
Christopher Dell

The social dimensions of architectural thinking and acting take on relevance when we conceive of architecture not merely as object-, but as situation- and context-related. With this shift on focus, questions are raised concerning the relationship between structure (object), improvisation (situation) and acting subject. Currently, an architectural strategy is emerging from this reflection that I would like to describe as a transition in urban planning, an “urbanistic turn.” This strategy recognizes that the city qua phenomenon is embedded in a context of process that cannot be interpreted as a closed, completed product, but instead must be conceived as performative practice. But what does performative mean and what is the relationship between perfomativity and improvisation? We maintain that action is a performative act: in other words, something that is carried out.

And vice-versa: in order to become an emancipatory force, performance presupposes an art of action, a practical-reflective knowledge, a constructive, intersubjective approach with disorder: improvisation. If we speak of improvisation as performance here, we are dealing with improvisation’s “showing of itself” in its cultural, technological and social meaning as representation, achievement and execution at the same time.