Model as Performance

Thea Brejzek is Professor for Spatial Theory at the University of Technology Sydney, Australia, and an internationally recognised expert in scenography. In 2011, she was the founding Curator for Theory at the Prague Quadrennial for Performance Design and Space (PQ). Recently, she has been a Visiting Professor at Bartlett School of Architecture, UK, and has been appointed to the international scientific advisory board of the Bauhaus, Dessau.Lawrence Wallen is Professor and Head of School of Design at the University of Technology Sydney, Australia. From 2001–12 he was Professor of Scenography at the Zurich University of the Arts, Switzerland. A trained visual artist and architect, his research and practice is concerned with representation of space, spatial narative and postcolonial readings of landscape.

• List of IllustrationsIntroductionChapter I. The Model as Idea and Object in Theatre and ArchitectureChapter II. Staging Politics and Knowledge: From the Ideal Stage to the Model Room and the Mechanical TheatreChapter III. Staging the Future: The Model as a Performance of InhabitationChapter IV. Staging Site: The Full Scale ModelChapter V. Staging the White Cube: The Model as a Performance of SpaceChapter VI. Summary and OutlookReferencesBibliographyIndex

The achievement of The Model as Performance is to shift thinking on the spatial model from representational concerns (the resemblance of the model to what it copies or projects) to interactional concerns (how models and our performative relations with them actively participate in what Thea and Lawrence call the ‘co-construction’ of reality)...But this is not just an academic book. Its nuanced, rigorous widening of the category of the model will no doubt be explored in studio pedagogy and studio practice.