The Model as Performance

This book examines the history and development of the physical scale model in theatre and architecture from the Renaissance to the present and argues the model’s capacity to stage space and enable performance.

The Model as Performance investigates the history and development of the scale model from the Renaissance to the present. Employing a scenographic perspective and a performative paradigm, it explores what the model can do and how it is used in theatre and architecture. The volume provides a comprehensive historical context and theoretical framework for theatre scholars, scenographers, artists and architects interested in the model’s reality-producing capacity and its recent emergence in contemporary art practice and exhibition. Introducing a typology of the scale model beyond the iterative and the representative model, the authors identify the autonomous model as a provocative construction between past and present, idea and reality, that challenges and redefines the relationship between object, viewer and environment. The Model as Performance was shortlisted for the best Performance Design & Scenography Publication Award at the Prague Quadrennial (PQ) 2019.