Script for a Synthetic Play — The Public Building

What moves between the walls of our public buildings? Who is it that truly inhabits these spaces? And what roles do we play within them? What if we are both the building blocks and the inhabitants, the creators and the created? What if we write the script as we go along?

This book stems from a two-day performative symposium, Unknown Grounds: The Public Building which brought together artists and thinkers to immerse in speculative scenarios.

By borrowing tools from the performance arts, we explored embodied collective thinking around the notion of “the public building.” We became characters in an experimental play, exploring new ways to relate and engage. In the shelter of fiction, we were free from social habits, empowered to see ourselves not just as passive occupants, but as active architects, speculators, constructors, foundation inspectors, janitors and maintenance workers.