Performing Architecture

As ‘affordability’ translates to ‘smaller’ in cities such as London and ‘3×4 metre’ plots in the most radical resettlement colonies in Delhi, it is necessary to expand our dialogue of alternative futures. Squeezing space to a minimum is producing intensively stacked and concentrated architectural forms. It is also creating a need for dialogue on the experiential aspects of micro living particularly as digital platforms create new types of blended living environments. Performance architecture is a tactic between artist and audience that exposes the permeability between subject and space as a mode of spatial production. Public audiences were invited to create and perform within a third space — to use Edward Soja’s 1996 term of the conflation of real and imagined spaces — using the open source principles of universal access, digital distribution and modification of designs for living. A telematic installation connected two 3×4 metre structures at the Southbank Centre in London with Khoj International Artists’ Association (12-14 December 2014) and India Habitat Centre (15-25 May and 28-31 May 2015) in Delhi and invited audiences in both cities to co-create the environments they playfully coexisted within. This visual essay illustrates the capacity of performance architecture to experiment with the experiential qualities of blended living spaces and elevate the concepts distorting ‘affordability’ from beneath the radar.