Architecture, festival and the city: introduction.

Martínez Sánchez, María José; Frost, Christian; Xiao, Jieling

Abstract

The theme of this issue of Architecture and Culture is "Architecture, Festival and the City". Our aim has been to posit and to explore the relationship between festivals and their settings in order to ask what constitutes festival in the contemporary city?; what allows a traditional festival to endure?; how can a new festival become meaningful?; and what do we expect a festival to do? The papers originate from the fourteenth conference of the Architectural Humanities Research Association (AHRA), held at Birmingham City University in November 2017, which itself grew out of our own research interests – Christian Frost's in the persistence of the Florentine festival of San Giovanni and its significance as a representation of civic order; María José Martínez Sánchez's in the articulation of public and civic spaces through performance; and Jieling Xiao's in the sensory experience of public space. The papers examine festivals through a variety of different lenses – through history (architectural and otherwise), anthropology, literary theory, phenomenological hermeneutics, and performance theory, to name the most prominent. Collectively, they explore the genesis of festivals and their continuity – often brought about, paradoxically, through changes to traditions, changes resulting from historical events. The importance of the specific temporality and the liminal status of festivals is made clear through discussions particularly of contemporary festive events, in which boundaries between "public" and "private" are frequently called into question. These themes, of festival and tradition, festival and time, festival and place, guided our editorial and curatorial decisions as we considered how to instigate the "Architecture, Festival and the City" conference and its exhibition as a festive event in its own right, and to understand its resultant publications (a book of the same title, and this journal issue) as versions of its continuity.

Citation

MARTÍNEZ SÁNCHEZ, M.J., FROST, C. and XIAO, J. 2018. Architecture, festival and the city: introduction. Architecture and culture [online], 6(3): architecture, festival and the city, pages 361-370. Available from: https://doi.org/10.1080/20507828.2018.1535013

• Journal Article Type: Article
• Acceptance Date: Oct 9, 2018
• Online Publication Date: Apr 12, 2019
• Publication Date: Dec 31, 2018
• Deposit Date: Jul 18, 2023
• Publicly Available Date: Jul 18, 2023
• Journal: Architecture and culture
• Print ISSN: 2050-7828
• Electronic ISSN: 2050-7836
• Publisher: Routledge
• Peer Reviewed: Peer Reviewed
• Volume: 6
• Issue: 3
• Pages: 361-370
• DOI: https://doi.org/10.1080/20507828.2018.1535013
• Keywords: Architecture; Festival; City; Carnival; Performance; Performativity
• Public URL: https://rgu-repository.worktribe.com/output/2002219