Theatrical City - Enhancing public theatricality through urban design

Either when called the “small urban spaces” (Whyte, 2001), or the “spaces between buildings” (Gehl, 1987) or the “public domain” (Müller, 2002), evident is that all various theories about low intensity social contacts (Gehl, 1987) emphasise on the role of the public spaces of the city. In this thesis, the public spaces are defined as the outdoor, accessible spaces of the city, where people are socially accessible for each other. According to theorists like Richard Schechner, and Erving Goffman, these are the places where we perform. In this thesis, the fragile state of social performance in modern Northwest-European city centres, and the even so uncertain future of aesthetic performance in times of large culture cutbacks formed basis of a two-sided problem statement: Cities miss out in enhancing the social life of cities, by not facilitating social performance optimally, while the performing arts sector misses out by creating aesthetic performances that are withdrawn from city life. In the main question, the issue is raised how these two kinds of performance can be enhanced. The research focuses on the physical conditions that enhance these two, resulting in a single mutual enhancement strategy: public theatricality. The strategy aims to change the public spaces of the city into places where art performances, derived from local art institutions, and the social performances of everyday life together result in lively, exciting city life. Apart from academic literature, this project uses the outcome of the design project as input for answering the research questions. In that way, the design project functions as a case study. The location of this design project is the city centre of Liverpool. As part of the application of the strategy, three squares in Liverpool are redesigned. The outcome of three designs formed the input basis for the formulation of the main urban design criteria, as a ‘toolbox’for the urban designer. These criteria, in combination with the strategy, offer a generic solution for the enhancement of social and aesthetic performance in Northwest-European cities. This thesis Theatrical City is the result of a project of Thomas Galesloot, as the graduation project of the Master Urbanism at the faculty of Architecture, TU Delft, The Netherlands.ExplorelabUrbanismArchitectur