Performative Renovations

SOAP, Schweder’s Office of Architectural Performances, offers renovations of people’s apartments through changes in the ways they are used rather than making physical changes to the space. Assuming that people use their domestic spaces to perform their identities, selves, and relationships, I have an hour-long conversation with my participant to collaboratively articulate who they want to become through their space and design a performance around becoming that person. As the architect, I then go to their house for the first time, dress up like them, enact the first rehearsal of the performance, and then have a photo taken of that situation that ultimately hangs in the home as an instruction for the renovational performance.