Performative Architecture: Beyond Instrumentality

This book addresses the emergence of a new kind of architecture, in which building performance is a guiding design principle, adopting new performance-based priorities for the design of cities, buildings, landscape and infrastructures. This emerging architecture places broadly defined performance above form making; it uses digital technologies of quantitative and qualitative performance-based simulation to offer a comprehensive approach to the design of the built environment. The emphasis on building performance is now redefining expectations of the building design, its process and practice.

Branko Kolarevic is an Associate Professor of Architecture and founder of the Digital Design Research Lab (DDRL) (www.gsfa.upenn.edu/ddrl) at the University of Pennsylvania. He has authored, edited, or co-edited several books, including Architecture in the Digital Age: Design and Manufacturing, published by Spon Press in 2003. He is the past President of the Association for Computer Aided Design in Architecture (ACADIA).

Ali Malkawi is Associate Professor of Architecture at the University of Pennsylvania. Founder and former coordinator of the Augmented Reality Group at the University of Michigan, he currently heads the Building Simulation Group at Penn.