Description
Book SynopsisArchitecture is on the brink. It is a discipline in crisis. Over the last two decades, architectural debate has diversified to the point of fragmentation and exhaustion. What is called for is an overarching argument or set of criteria on which to approach the design and construction of the built environment. Here, the internationally renowned architect and educator Michael Hensel advocates an entirely different way of thinking about architecture. By favouring a new focus on performance, he rejects longstanding conventions in design and the built environment. This not only bridges the gap between academia and practice, but, even more significantly, the treatment of form and function in design. It also has a far-reaching impact on knowledge production and development, placing an important emphasis on design research in architecture and the value of an interdisciplinary approach.
Though performance' first evolved as a concept in the humanities in the 1940s and 1950s, it has neve
Table of Contents
Dedication 005
Acknowledgements 005
Foreword by David Leatherbarrow 009
Introduction: The Task at Hand 015
Chapter 1: A Brief History of the Notion of Performance 017
Chapter 2: A Brief History of the Notion of Performance in Architecture 023
Chapter 3: Non-Discrete Architectures 031
Chapter 4: Non-Anthropocentric Architectures 045
Chapter 5: Traits of Performance-Oriented Architecture 053
Local Climate and Microclimate 057
Material Performance 059
The Active Boundary, the Articulated Envelope and Heterogeneous Environments 067
The Extended Threshold 082
Second-Degree Auxiliarity: Supplementary Architectures 095
First-Degree Auxiliarity: Embedded Architectures 109
Multiple Grounds and Settlement Patterns 116
Chapter 6: The Road(s) Ahead 133
Select Bibliography 143
Index 148
Picture Credits 152
