Event-space : theatre architecture and the historical avant-garde / Dorita Hannah ; with original photography by Marc Goodwin.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Introduction: event-space: a performance model for architecture -- Disciplining the bourgeois glory machine -- Absolute space: universal landscapes -- Abstract space: toward an architecture of alienation -- Abject space: toward an architecture of cruelty -- Conclusion: making architecture tremble.

"As the symbolists, constructivists and surrealists of the historical avant-garde began to abandon traditional theatre spaces and embrace the more contingent locations of the theatrical and political 'event', the built environment of a performance became not only part of the event, but an event in and of itself. Event-Space radically re-evaluates the avant garde's championing of nonrepresentational spaces, drawing on the specific fields of performance studies and architectural studies to establish a theory of 'performative architecture'. 'Event'was of immense significance to modernism's revolutionary agenda, resisting realism and naturalism - and, simultaneously, the monumentality of architecture itself. Event-Space analyzes a number of spatiotemporal models central to that revolution, both illuminating the history of avant-garde performance and inspiring contemporary approaches to performance space."--Provided by publisher.