Architecture and spaces for performative arts: Venues and sites for mixed use in the arts and culture - accessibility, programming and expanded scenographies

• Applicants: Professorin Dr. Barbara Büscher; Professorin Dr.-Ing. Annette Menting
• Subject Area: Theatre and Media Studies ; Architecture, Building and Construction History, Construction Research, Sustainable Building Technology
• Term: since 2016
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 284156660

Widening the horizons to consider not only the architectures specifically built for theatre/dance/performance as places and spaces for performative arts, the present inquiry embeds the findings of the first phase of the research project in the context of a broader development. It outlines four levels on which mono-artistically conceived buildings and the programmes of theatres, operas, and exhibition halls/museums can be seen to be diversifying. These four levels represent four distinct constellations of cultural institutions and their architectures, (urban) society and groups of users:• Mixed use in the arts and culture (or: linking of various cultural/artistic uses) points to the spatial proximity and shared architecture of various hitherto separately accommodated cultural and art-specific sites and institutions.• Diversification of mono-artistically conceived sites and venues can be observed in many different facets. Theatres (and theatre buildings), for example, are opening up to the urban societies and neighbourhoods of the places where they are located. This development is attended by discussions of the “city as commons” (Stavrides 2016) and the “porous city” (Wolfrum et al. 2018), in which shared, inviting, and accessible (threshold) spaces are an essential aspect of future urbanity. • Linking cultural uses by necessity within rural infrastructureIn rural areas there are multifarious venues, sites, and spaces, which are both privately and publicly funded. They take diverging approaches to programming and their ‘surface’, architectural appearances differ widely.• Converted facilities and complexes as frames for linking cultural useSites consisting of former industrial facilities and buildings, situated on spacious grounds, that have been repurposed for cultural and artistic use indicate the linking of cultural uses. The synergies they thus generate, in the sense of being open and accessible to widely diverse groups of users, are explored here in addition to the architectural orientation of the various buildings on the grounds, the arrangement and alignment of their thresholds, and their common areas and connecting passages and spaces, as forms of accessibility and threshold spatiality. By contextualising and extending the inquiry in this way, the project embeds its findings on spaces and architectures for performative arts in today’s international discourse on the future of cities/rural areas and their cultural and artistic sites, spaces, and venues. Furthermore, it reports on developments in the performative practice of such places, by examining various cultural and regional constellations.

• DFG Programme: Research Grants