Performative Reading of Slow House as an Attempt to Conceptualise Architectural Space

Abstract

Considering how humans effectively use the power of design in the historical process, it is important to discuss the definitions of human beings that we accept as unchanging and stable. The reason is that this process, including the body, results in the idealisation and standardisation of design objects and architectural space. Due to the discussion of the existing admissions, the reality shift also suggests that no identity definition can be accurate anymore. In this sense, this study seeks a method to read the change potential of architectural space in the field of defined uncertainty and ambiguity. For this, the concept of performativity, which Butler unfolds over the materialisation of the body, with Barad expanding its boundaries to explain the nature of production in the post-humanist context, will be utilised. In this perspective, the study will try to show the new possibilities of the architectural space, unlike stable, passive roles assigned to the space, through the concept of performativity, and on the other hand, to conceptualise the production of the variable role and position of the architectural space in its current state. Accordingly, the study strives to use the power of performativity to displace the definitions of body identity and to blur the boundaries between oppositions to realise an opening towards architectural space. In addition, the perspective that the concept of performativity will provide will be read through the example of Diller & Scofidio's Slow House.