In this issue of Columns, we explore the role in which performance plays in the built environment and in the people that help shape it.  More than just an overview of buildings that serve as places where performances happen, the feature articles explore aspects of this theme from each guest editor’s distinct point of view.   

Earlier in my career, I worked at a firm that was trying to rebrand itself by declaring that what they offered was “performance-driven design”.  In addition to creating structures and spaces that fulfilled their given program, it also implied that the design was justified by its metrics: its efficiency, its cost, or how it aligned with environmentally sustainable goals.  The feature contributed by guest editor Beth Brant, AIA, LEED AP approaches this perspective in a similar way, emphasizing how architects are responsible for how their buildings perform with regards to energy standards, and by going into depth with case studies of adaptive reuse such in Waco and in Austin.   

Performance doesn’t apply solely to buildings.  It applies just as much to the people that design them. Guest editor Justin Bashaw, AIA reminds that we are always performing at our jobs, both when we come up with design ideas and implement them through our drawings and renderings, but especially when we are presenting those ideas to the client. He draws upon his own experiences at Gensler to show how building a strong relationship with clients is a kind of performance and is as essential to an architect’s success as the quality of their work and ideas.    

This awareness for performance begins before one obtains a degree.   Nick Nepveux describes how students unknowingly take on a role similar to actors on a film set when they take part in a design-build studio at school. Within the span of a semester, they follow a script from the classroom to the workshop, and finally to the construction site with each student playing their part in a kind of ensemble cast.  

What if the stage itself is expected to perform? Shouldn’t urban spaces be able to perform for people who live in the city? Aren’t they supposed to be places where the performance of public life takes place? Brian Nicodemus, AIA, explores various districts in downtown Dallas and evaluates whether they are “sticky”, in which people want to stay or return to.   

We hope that by reading these features, you will come away with a broader awareness of how all the entities that accomplish the tasks, or in other words, perform, play a critical part in the world that we create together. 

Julien Meyrat, AIA, LEED AP 

Editor in Chief