Abstract:
The street has become a tool of movement and circulation around the city that we as inhabitants have used and thus limited the very function of what the street potentially is. Streets are systematically laid paths that choreograph the movement of people between the grand physical forms that we call architecture. A journey to admire, experience and dwell within the abundantly given spaces the city provides. This is how the city performs. However, the tunnel-visioned goal to reach point B. from point A. limits this function of admiration and has left us with the mundane use of just purely moving. Despite this aimless forwardness that people have taken into, others use the street differently. They are buskers. The street performers. “Ephemeral” beings that use the street as their stage. This thesis aims to respond to this mundane street use that the public has taken into their city lives and explores the invisible stage the busker creates to give a different perspective of what the street is to the public audience. While the thesis mentions performances, it refers mainly to busking and buskers and their influence on the public audience within the streetscape. The city as we know it may well be called the Formal City, where the social norm makes the public audience part of a choreographed city. A formality that has to be followed within this city. The thesis introduces a new realm called the Informal City as described by Michael Laguerre. A city that coexists within the Formal City where the mainstream city life is acted upon differently or in a performative manner. Through these coexisting dimensions of the city, is where the thesis will aim to find the link that connects the two realms, essentially defining that not only buskers are performers but the audience is also part of it. Following the steps a busker takes, the thesis will go through the Set-up, the Performance, and the Clean-up. Questioning the ideology of the common street, the thesis will explore experimental busking performances along with what architect Mark Wigley calls Prosthetic Architecture, to convey a dimension of space that sets itself apart from the everyday city we are familiar with but also gives us the consciousness of the coexisting realm of the Informal City. The proposal for this design aims towards designing architecture that shares the ephemeral characteristic of busking. Constantly moving, constantly giving opportunity that a familiar space can be more than just a street.