ABSTRACT
The theater arts have analyzed performance in ways that can help us understand how buildings perform and comprehend the paradoxes that set architectural performance apart. There is the paradox of star architects whose performance can lead to poorly performing buildings, of taxation that depreciates buildings faster than their useful life, of real estate agents who hide the worst-performing aspects of buildings, and of inhabitants who often adapt to the most glaring errors in a design. Performance studies in theater can help the architectural community address such paradoxes. Mimesis suggests that we can learn how to deal with flawed buildings as we do flawed characters in a play. Poiesis shows how inhabitants can have agency in changing the conditions of the buildings they occupy. And kinesis reminds us that we perform as much as our buildings and that we are active participants in and not passive recipients of a design.
