ABSTRACT
This chapter introduces performance-criticality as a keystone at the intersection of technological advances, environmental sustainability, and aesthetic qualifications in a culturally conducive way for architecture. The chapter first lays out what architectural performance is and explores how performance-criticality pertains to the aesthetic disposition of architecture in the context of today’s pervasive algorithmic technology. The chapter then critiques performance-redundancy in architecture that appears neither tenable nor viable any longer in the context of the dependencies that are required to support it. Finally, the chapter considers how the concept of performance-criticality may conflate technology and aesthetics toward culturally situated purposiveness that we identify as sustainable design. The chapter posits that the question of performance in architecture no longer represents a category separate and independent from aesthetic qualifications. The chapter is dedicated to the discourse of architectural and environmental aesthetics in how we employ what kind of materials, tools, and techniques and for what purpose.
