Event Date: 30th January 2009
Speaker: Sophie Wolfrum
Venue: Max Mueller Bhavan, Mumbai

Architectural theory takes a line of discourse that underlines the performative aspect of architecture. The performative aspect stresses the component of spatial experience and action that is indispensable in architectural reality. Accordingly, architecture has a repertoire of specifically architectural means and structures, that only develop reality character in a cultural event, in a situation of use, movement and ‘being in it’ during the reception. In the foreground of this understanding of architecture and city are the processual qualities of the spatial experience, the event structure of spatial coherence, the openness of spatial structures. Performative urbanism, however, does not stop at a psycho-geographical reception of city, but acknowledges the urgency of architectural design.