Architecture of Performance: Bodies / Buildings / Behaviors

April 7-10, 2027,  New Orleans, Louisiana, USA

Hosted by Tulane University School of Architecture & the Built Environment with University of Louisiana Lafayette School of Architecture & Design

Conference Co-Chairs: Ashlie Boelkins, AIA + Shawna Meyer, AIA

CALL FOR ABSTRACTS
SUBMISSIONS + DEADLINES
RESEARCH POSTER AND FINAL PAPER SUBMISSION
TOPIC AREAS
CONFERENCE SCHEDULE (is available now!)
KEYNOTE SPEAKERS
WORKSHOPS
PLENARIES
LOCAL VENUE + ACCOMMODATIONS (Limited Room available!)
REGISTRATION
GRADUATE STUDENT SCHOLARSHIP
TOURS
NEIGHBORHOODS + FOOD

The Architecture of Performance: Bodies / Buildings / Behaviors explores architecture not as a static object, but as an active performance shaped through embodied experience, material systems, ecologies and collective action. This conference invites researchers, designers, and scholars to examine how architecture operates dynamically to mediate relationships among human and more-than-human bodies, constructed forms, and the environmental and social systems in which they are embedded.

Organized around the interrelated lenses of Bodies, Buildings, and Behaviors, the conference foregrounds architecture as a temporal, relational, and agentive practice. BODIES considers water, movement, sensation, health, and agency, asking how architecture choreographs lived experience across human actors. BUILDINGS focus on form, materiality, and design practice, framing buildings as performative apparatuses that modulate energy, climate, and matter over time. BEHAVIORS expands the scale to systems, ecologies, and societies, investigating how architectural interventions shape environmental processes, innovative pedagogies, social practices, and patterns of use. The call for papers is interested in proposals that measure the unmeasurable and establish metrics beyond performance optimization.  These modes of analyses offer multiscalar examinations of environmental conditions and tools that affect their cultural, political, and spatial implications.

By bringing together theoretical inquiry, empirical research, and design-based experimentation, the conference seeks to advance new frameworks for understanding architectural performance — ones that acknowledge complexity, interdependence, and responsibility in an era of environmental and social urgency.

SCHEDULE

Monday, April 20, 2026 Call for Submission – Portal Opens

Monday, July 20, 2026 Deadline for submitting abstracts for full papers, posters, and PhD Students Workshop

Monday, September 7, 2026 Confirmation of accepted abstracts for full papers and posters

Monday, November 16, 2026 Deadline for full paper and full poster submissions

Monday, January 11, 2027 Acceptance confirmation for full papers

Monday, February 8, 2027 Deadline for submitting final papers and posters