Architectural Performance

Definition

Architectural performance, in the production-oriented register, names what a building or interior does — the scenes it triggers, the effects it produces, the experiences it sponsors — rather than what it measures. Two canonical statements frame the concept in Clay Odom's chapter. Kipnis supplies the genre definition: "performance in architecture is closer to theater and music than to science or engineering, as much if not more a question of elusive qualities than of measurable effects" — performance as an art of elusive qualities, not engineering metrics. Koolhaas supplies the operational maxim: "performance is not function. What role does the building play and what kinds of scenes does it trigger? … What does it create? What does it sponsor? And what does it stimulate?" (interview with Charlie Rose, on Milstein Hall, 2011). Odom's interrogation of Koolhaas "move[s] beyond limited notions of building to questions of making, and ultimately to questions which are focused on the nature of objects themselves, what they produce, and the processes that produce them."

Odom's own contribution is the phrase expanded performance: "Tracing a trajectory from the production of effects through engagements with material, surface, finish, and form toward a production of form through the manipulation of effects engages a type of expanded performance" — performance as the medium in which effects and form loop through one another, rather than a measurable output. The concept must be read against its two neighbors: engineering "performance" (the "neodeterminist jargon" of building metrics, which Kipnis's epigraph explicitly disavows) and the spectacular "performance" of iconic architecture (spectacle). In the POP register, performance is neither: it is the designed production of conditions — "edgeless, yet particular conditions which proliferate" — whose test is what they "trigger, create, sponsor, and stimulate."

Dorita Hannah's chapter supplies the concept's third pole and its historical critique: the technical-diagnostic regime ("In architectural discourse, the term 'performance' has generally been associated with building science… a technical and diagnostic tool for investigating the quantifiable workings of the constructed environment," occupants rendered "users") against the performative — Leatherbarrow's warning that the technical dedication "will lead to nothing more than an uncritical affirmation of old style functionalist thinking – a kind of thinking that is both reductive and inadequate because it recognizes only what it can predict" (p. 7). Her reformulation gives the concept its evaluative grammar: "It is perhaps more productive to ask not what a building (as singular object) is, but what the fabricated environment (as a dynamic multiplicity) does… built environments no longer need be perceived in relation to singular works of architecture, but as multimodal spatial action itself – as spacing!" And Schechner's "broad spectrum approach" widens the concept's domain beyond the staged and the engineered: "while not everything is a conscious performance, everything can be studied as performance, including aesthetic, strategic, and operational acts occurring beyond theater." See spatial-performativity, event-space.

Key Thinkers

• Jeff Kipnis — the genre definition: performance "closer to theater and music than to science or engineering… as much if not more a question of elusive qualities than of measurable effects" (A Question of Qualities, 2013) (not yet paged — see log).
• Rem Koolhaas — the operational maxim: "performance is not function"; scenes triggered, created, sponsored, stimulated; the Prada Foundation's "mirroring operations to optical mirrors" as the built instance.
• Clay Odom — the concept's systematizer: "expanded performance" as the effects-material-form loop; the four Koolhaas verbs (trigger, create, sponsor, stimulate) as POPs' evaluative vocabulary.
• Bernard Tschumi — the lineage's event-side: Architecture in/of Motion supplies the chapter's epigraph ("Architecture is the ultimate erotic act") — the sensuality that "has been known to overcome even the most rational of buildings."
• Dorita Hannah — the concept's third pole: the performative against building performance — "not what a building… is, but what the fabricated environment… does"; Leatherbarrow's functionalism critique transmitted; Schechner's "broad spectrum approach" (2018).
• David Leatherbarrow — the critique's source: "an uncritical affirmation of old style functionalist thinking" (Performative Architecture: Beyond Instrumentality, 2005, p. 7; via Hannah; not yet paged — see log).

Related Concepts

• productions — the outcome performance names: "What does it create? What does it sponsor? And what does it stimulate?" are production questions.
• event-space — the spatial form of staged performance: scenes and sequences rather than rooms (the grotto lineage, via performative-ornament).
• spectacle — the commodified double: performance as designed effect vs. the spectacle's representation-regime; Koolhaas's scenes vocabulary is the bridge term.
• interactive-architecture — the actuated cousin: sensors and actuators perform in real time, where expanded performance loops effects through form in design.
• production-oriented-practices — the practices whose "expanded performance" the concept names.
• Performative Envelope — the material-systems branch of the same turn: performance located in the envelope's differentiated articulation, where "the performative quality of space ceased to be merely a representational tool" and forms become "able to reinvent function" (Vanucci).

Source Support

Sources in the wiki that discuss this concept:

• Productions: spatial practices, processes, and effects (Odom 2018) — the concept's source: Kipnis's "elusive qualities" definition (epigraph); Koolhaas's "performance is not function" (quoted from the Charlie Rose interview, 2011); the "expanded performance" trajectory from effects through material, surface, finish, and form; and OMA's Prada Foundation as the built exemplar.
• Inside-out and outside-in (Vanucci 2018) — the performance turn historicized and materialized: "Advanced computation became a tool for simulating material behavior, and the performative quality of space ceased to be merely a representational tool"; FOA's Yokohama Ferry Terminal "paved the way to a new understanding of the relationship between materiality, structure, and performance in architecture"; and the concept's function-inverting yield — "It is now possible to think and design forms that, through their performative quality, are able to reinvent function." Where Odom's register evaluates performance by what it sponsors (scenes, effects), Vanucci's locates it in the envelope's differentiated material organization — performance as the skin's articulation of interiority (performative-envelope), with the same Koolhaasian lineage ("junk space… the true product of modernization") explaining why performance displaced representation.
• Event-space: A performance model for spatial design (Hannah 2018) — the concept's third pole: the technical "building performance" regime named and displaced ("the term 'performance' has generally been associated with building science… occupants… rendered 'users'") by the performative; Leatherbarrow's functionalism critique (p. 7); the evaluative reformulation ("not what a building (as singular object) is, but what the fabricated environment (as a dynamic multiplicity) does… as multimodal spatial action itself – as spacing!"); Schechner's "broad spectrum approach" ("everything can be studied as performance… beyond theater"); and the illocutionary ground (Austin via Kwinter — architecture as "an illocutionary event"). See spatial-performativity, spacing, event-space.

Open Questions

• Kipnis's "elusive qualities" vs. engineering's "measurable effects": can a discipline hold both senses of performance — or does the sustainable-building register (energy metrics) now own the word, leaving the POP register to need Odom's "expanded" qualifier? Hannah's chapter sharpens this into a three-way split: technical building performance / theatrical performance / the performative ("not what a building is, but what it does") — which of the three owns the concept's future?
• Koolhaas's four verbs — trigger, create, sponsor, stimulate — make performance a relation to an audience's action. Is "performance" therefore always a theater metaphor at bottom (scenes, sponsors, spectators), and what does that borrow from scenography (Robert Lepage appears in the chapter's process-design list)? Hannah's answer — the whole disciplinary model as scenography — radicalizes the metaphor: does the POP register then depend on a theory (Hannah's) it has not yet acknowledged?
• If "performance is not function," is the concept an alternative to functionalism or its expansion? Odom's "expanded performance" loops effects back into form-production — a functionalism of effects rather than uses?
• Leatherbarrow's criterion — technical thinking "recognizes only what it can predict" — implies the performative is the unpredictable. Can a design discipline that must specify, cost, and build plan for the unpredictable without re-absorbing it into "itineraries of control" (Solà-Morales's diagnosis)? See weak-architecture.