Beyond buildings: performance and architecture
Architecture Awards Week
Friday 17 May 2019 6.30 - 8pm
The Benjamin West Lecture Theatre, Burlington Gardens, Royal Academy of Arts, Piccadilly
£15, £9
Join us for a panel discussion looking at the performative side of architecture – learn more about how an active arts practice can develop and drive spatial ideas.
Inspired by the work of Elizabeth Diller and Ricardo Scofidio, the winners of this year’s Royal Academy Architecture Prize, we take the opportunity to view architecture as a field of performative research.
In this panel discussion, practitioners will present critical work that pushes the boundaries of what is normally perceived as architecture and demonstrates how experimental practice can help uncover new strategies for addressing the challenges facing contemporary society.
The conversation will include both architects who use performance as a research tool that informs their buildings, and individuals who use performance as a medium for exploring architectural ideas in their own right.
How can architects use performance to explore spatial qualities? Can the knowledge gained from this provide productive and tangible advantages to designing the built environment? What are the benefits of understanding architecture as the physical manifestation of social relationships? Join us and find out how architecture can channel a relationship with performance to generate a deeper understanding of the spaces we navigate on a daily basis.
Speakers
Dr. Adesola Akinleye is an artist-scholar. She is a Senior Lecturer at Middlesex University in the Faculty of Arts and Creative Industries. She began her career as a dancer with Dance Theatre of Harlem, USA she later worked with Green Candle Dance UK and Union Dance UK. Her company DancingStrong, currently creates interdisciplinary-performance work touring UK and North America. Her teaching, writing and choreography weave together to inform her creative practice which centres on exploring the lived experience as embodied, and "bodily" knowledge as central to meaning making.
Dr. Ruairi Glynn is Director of the Interactive Architecture Lab at the Bartlett, University College London. In 2017 he established the MArch Design for Performance and Interaction masters programme at the Bartlett developing new interdisciplinary spatial practices drawing upon fields of performing arts, digital media, robotics and architecture. As a practicing installation artist, he has been exhibited internationally including the Centre Pompidou Paris, the National Art Museum of China Beijing, Ars Electronica Linz and Tate Modern London.
Elizabeth Lynch is an arts producer, consultant and coach. She has recently worked as Special Advisory to GLA London Borough of Culture, Creative People and Places, LAMDA, National Trust, Kew Gardens, Bush Theatre, Poetry Society, Kinetika (Associate artist for UK/India programme). She established Roundhouse Studios as Director 2001-8 and Tower Hamlets Summer University as Director 1996-2001. As a theatre director, she has worked for companies in the UK, India, Pakistan and Bangladesh.
Chiara Stephenson is an International Stage and Costume designer working across Theatre, Ballet, Live Music Performance, Exhibition design, Retail and Installation. Recent clients include The xx Festival Headline Show, Selfridges' immersive exhibition The Flip Side at the Old Selfridges Hotel and the 2018 West End Production of Glengarry Glen Ross. Chiara was Associate to Es Devlin between 2010 – 2017 and trained under Christopher Oram and Michael Grandage at the Donmar Warehouse between 2008 –2010.
£15, £9
Explore more...
£25, £15
Combined ticket for the Royal Academy Dorfman Award: Finalist Presentation and Live Judging and the Royal Academy Architecture Prize lecture with Elizabeth Diller and Ricardo Scofidio.
£40, £24
Combined ticket to all paid events during Architecture Awards week. Don't miss any of our events including headline lectures, conversations with previous winners and panel discussions that will broaden our understanding of architectural practice today.
Find out more about our full programme of events, celebrating architecture from around the world. The programme includes free events for students and opportunities to engage with some of the most exciting emerging and established architectural practices from around the world.
Related events
- Talk
Curator talk: Brasil! Brasil! The Birth of Modernism
31 January 2025
- Talk
'The Color Black' with Mohsen Mostafavi and Peter Märkli
6 February 2025
- Talk
The story of Michelangelo’s ‘Taddei Tondo’
7 February 2025
- TalkFree
InPractice
21 February 2025
- Talk
Building Brazilian Modernism
26 March 2025
- Talk
- Talk
Brazilian Modernisms and Beyond: Symposium
4 April 2025
- Talk
Social Housing in the Balearic Islands
24 April 2025