ARCC 2021 International Conference
PERFORMATIVE ENVIRONMENTS

April 7-10, 2021  I  Tucson, Arizona USA

Hosted by The University of Arizona
Conference Co-Chairs: Clare M. Robinson, Beth M. Weinstein, College of Architecture, Planning & Landscape Architecture

With sponsorship support from the AIA and Velux.

Conference Theme

Research concerning performative environments encompasses building components to buildings, landscape, and urban performances, conceived in terms of structural, environmental, material, and information systems. While technological performances of built environments may be the dominant framework through which performance is conceptualized and space is evaluated, architecture and built environments succeed or fail according to a broad spectrum of performance criteria: these include aesthetic criteria as well as the social, cultural, economic and political production and inhabitation of space. The concept of performative environments not only posits that people create and act upon buildings, but also that the latter have agency of their own. Space performs!

 

The 2021 ARCC Conference will gather a broad and entangled series of presentations and conversations under three thematic umbrellas—technological, organizationaland cultural. This organization is modeled after performance studies scholar Jon McKenzie’s “rehears(ed) general theory of performance,” reinterpreted tochallengeenvironments:“Perform—or else.” The provocations that follow draw from a wealth of designers, researchers and scholars contributing to understandings of the complexities of performance in contemporary spatial culture, research, pedagogy and practice.