Theatres of Architectural Imagination

This volume explores connections between architecture and theatre, and encourages imagination in the design of buildings and social spaces.

Imagination is arguably the architect’s most crucial capacity, underpinning memory, invention, and compassion. No simple power of the mind, architectural imagination is deeply embodied, social, and situational. Its performative potential and holistic scope may be best understood through the model of theatre. Theatres of Architectural Imagination examines the fertile relationship between theatre and architecture with essays, interviews and entr’actes arranged in three sections: Bodies, Settings, and (Inter)Actions. Contributions explore a global spectrum of examples and contexts, from ancient Rome and Renaissance Italy to modern Europe, North America, India, Iran, and Japan. Topics include the central role of the human body in design; the city as a place of political drama, protest, and phenomenal play; and world-making through language, gesture, and myth. Chapters also consider sacred and magical functions of theatre in Balinese and Persian settings; eccentric experiments at the Bauhaus and 1970 Osaka World Expo; and ecological action and collective healing amid contemporary climate chaos. Inspired by architect and educator Marco Frascari, the book performs as a Janus-like memory theatre, recalling and projecting the architect’s perennial task of reimagining a more meaningful world.

This collection will delight and provoke thinkers and makers in theatrical arts and built environment disciplines, especially architecture, landscape, and urban design.

Lisa Landrum is Associate Professor and Associate Dean Research in the Faculty of Architecture at the University of Manitoba in Winnipeg, Canada. She holds a Bachelor of Architecture from Carleton University, and a post-professional Master’s and PhD in Architectural History and Theory from McGill University. She is a registered architect in New York State and Manitoba, and a fellow of the Royal Architectural Institute of Canada. Her research on architectural agency and the theatrical origins of architectural acts is published in several books, including Reading Architecture (Routledge 2019), Confabulations: Storytelling in Architecture (Routledge 2017), Architecture’s Appeal (Routledge 2015), Architecture as a Performing Art (Routledge 2013), and Architecture and Justice (Routledge 2013).

Sam Ridgway is an architect and Adjunct Associate Professor in the School of Architecture and Built Environment at the University of Adelaide, Australia. He has a Master of Architecture from the University of Adelaide and a PhD from the University of Sydney. His research and publications have focused on a theorization of factory-made buildings, construction theory, architectural representation, and the texts and buildings of the remarkable architect and academic Marco Frascari. Recent work explores architectural imagination by enquiring into the complex relationship between architecture and theatre. His publications include Architectural Projects of Marco Frascari: The Pleasure of a Demonstration (Routledge 2015), and "A Theater of Architectural Monsters," in Ceilings and Dreams: The Architecture of Levity (Routledge 2020).