Architects are increasingly directing design and representational skills to social advocacy and creative-critical insurgency, resulting in new ways to imagine and enact situational transformation. Widespread concern for shared challenges is fostering new forms of assembly and agency toward social justice and climate action.

This seminar explores the history, theory, and potential of unconventional modes of ‘architecting’ through study of contemporary practices engaged in insurgency through performative modes of representation, social engagement and theatrical arts. While some case studies intersect theatrical arts directly, ‘theatre’ here is understood as an arena of concentrated attention and action – a shared milieu of knowledge, inter-action, agon (conflict) and transformation. It is a space for radical integration and imaginative experimentation, where complex situations and scenarios are staged for collective consideration and change. Theatre is also our ‘theatre of the mind’ to rehearse the ever-transforming drama of architecture and life from multiple perspectives, while experiencing epiphanic instances of edifying order.

As part of their research, students each produced: a MANIFESTO – a short declaration of desires and demands, provocations and protests, calls to action and calls to pause, think and act differently; and a MAELSTROM – a powerful swirling of ideas that draws everything into its spiral. For this seminar, the maelstrom (a dangerous whirlpool in the sea) was a model for architectural theory, imagination, and agency – an integrative and creative force – a risky and revelatory mode of panoramic vision.