Author(s)/Creator(s)

Ching Huen Leung

Document Type

Thesis

Degree

M. ARCH

Date

Spring 2020

Keywords

narration, design, research, performance, theater, theatricality, dance, actions

Language

English

Disciplines

Architecture

Description/Abstract

A column at a scale of a chair, a door half-opened in front of that column. Dancing, spectating, running, etc. Can an open-ending narrative be generated through the interaction between these disembodied objects and subjects? Treating building elements as set pieces, improvisations are generated by both signified objects and participants. The show is currently on play in different locations: You can find it in a field of landscape; in a chaotic street of Tokyo, or even at the back alley near your neighborhood…Don’t hesitate to create your own plot when you encounter them! My thesis mainly focuses on the implementation of theatricality, a narrative style that is both spatial and performative. Concepts like theatricality and spectacles are permeating our society since late capitalism. Techne/Tectonic that rooted in the origin of Architecture has also come a long way from the classical period. Theatricality, namely a gap between reality and its representation, has never been more appropriate under such context. Inspired by both Artaud and Hartoonian’s implications of theatricality, my intention is to explore the potential state of Techne/Tectonic through aesthetic, performative and philosophical means. Narrations of new spatiality are ex-pressed through the disembodied tectonic elements (signifier). By treating building elements as set pieces on stage, improvisations are generated by both signifier and participants. Theatricality is here used as a representation/communication tool that mediates fictional scenarios and everyday experiences, in order to grasp the uncanny residues/gaps between reality and fiction. It also synthesizes the roles of people and objects in a theatrical play through *‘a sense of humor, a sense of laughter’s power of physical and anarchic dissociation.’ This ephemeral stage can be deployed in different contexts to generate dialogical spaces that are not predetermined by conven-tional building programs. New spatiality is invented and reinvented through ever-changing, non-linear story-lines, resulting in a tangled complementary and contradictions. By extending the performance and spatial production beyond the proscenium, it is aimed to address social, cultural process, as well as political and economic public sphere that shaped by theatricality. A sense of carnivalesque is aimed to brought out through the communicative dimension of architecture and the production of knowledge through narration.

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Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

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