Sceno-Architecture: A Scenographic City through the Performative upon Queen St.

Abstract

The history and development of scenography and architecture, although traced to similar origins, has posited the two disciplinaries in a contrast of its fundamental tasks – the ephemeral and the temporal, against the durable and its permanence. Yet the two establish a common ground, that is, through the analysis of bodies in play, and in space: the core discourse of performance architecture. In its contemporary state, scenography has no longer confined its assertion to the pictorial and theatrical decoration, but rather, also, in the narrative curation of the human body through space– expanding upon its quotidian and the framing of the event; to which, is dubbed within the project as “Sceno-architecture”. The distinction of performance within Queen St is one historically done upon its levelled horizontal ground, directed towards the south or north. Riddled with buskers, and street artists, throughout the week, the performers lie their equipment flat on the ground, matching the visual level of their public audience as rallies and parades march on flat-footed to the tar to catch their spectators from its sidewalks. But parades do offer a key moment of theatricality than most: its performers vertically risen upon their parading floats - offering a dynamic spectator-to-performer exchange that is rarely distinguished throughout the street. In the future of a pedestrianised Queen St, the thesis investigates a use of scenography and performance architecture within the event, envisioning the “Scenographic City” upon the performative through the Waihorotiu/Queen St valley – utilising the contemporary paradigms of performance in the technological, operational, and cultural that presents critical relevance in the now 21st century. The strategy then provokes and considers how the dynamic and transitory traits of events in Queen St. is able to collide with the static nature of its built surroundings to generate an enlivened urban fabric, spotlighting the performative nature of its buildings, bodies, and technology. Through design, the thesis regards the characteristics of Queen St as a distinctive “theatre-in-waiting”, its complex traits signified from its composition of levels, verandas, history, businesses, and inhabitants. Thus, the concept aims for the enhancement of the street’s natural built streetscape/scenography in the plantation of the project’s performative urban interventions, dubbed as the “Kit of Interventions”; enabling a utilisation of its macro-performances, as an entirety, and its micro-performances, implicated from the program within as it manifests a shaping of the urban experience, and its nightscape, through an engagement of the scenographic and its built surroundings.