
The author’s books Houses in Motion: The Genesis, History, and Development of the Portable Building, 1995, 2002, Portable Architecture, Architectural Press, 1996, 2000, 2003, Flexible: Architecture that Responds to Change, Laurence King, 2007, and Portable Architecture: Design and Technology, 2008, all have sections devoted to mobile and adaptive performance spaces by architects such as Mark Fisher and FTL Design and Engineering Studio. This work is therefore based in a foundation of investigation that goes back two decades.
This research, for the first time, examines in architectural terms the full range of popular music venues, and explore their significance as a distinct genre of buildings that has many sources of inspiration and routes to realisation. This is a building type that is an essential component in the success of an immensely popular and culturally significant phenomenon that describes so clearly (and with, of course, so many apparent contradictions) what people think about their way of life and place in society. The research crosses the boundaries between architecture, interior design, product design and popular music, cultural history, communication studies.

Back to: School of Architecture