Taste Untold: Critical Performance Practice and Contemporary Public Space

This thesis is an investigation into the field of architecture and urban design, focusing on the codes and practices of contemporary public space. Underscoring a dependent correlation between research and existing urban sites, the investigation is situated on Granary Square, arguably the most successful privately owned public space made in London in recent years, located at the heart of the King’s Cross Estate. Within architecture and urban design fields, high regard for specific urban regeneration projects with POPS at their heart normally overlooks their inherently divisive social impact, and strengthens the often legitimised belief that analysing, questioning and re-aligning such impact falls outside the realm of these professions. The investigation addresses some of the reasons behind such overlooking, and articulates research-practice that critically approaches some of the effects contemporary public spaces have on the unfolding of urban life, including on dominant aesthetic narratives often communicated through pseudo-public environments.

The thesis sets out to test the agency of spatial practices in contemporary public space post-occupancy, by critically inspecting active maintenance practices specific to the King’s Cross Estate, in connection to those characteristic of architecture and spatial practices more broadly. Research has been driven by routinely asking: how can performance practice be used as an agent to question and realign the codes and practices of contemporary public space? Motivated by this question, research-practice evolves through reading and writing, as well as through designing, negotiating and delivering performance interventions involving medium to long-term engagement with specific local groups. A feedback loop between these research methods critically informs the investigation, and shapes critical connections between architectural and urban design and performance practice tailored to contemporary public space. The contribution to knowledge derives from exploring how use and everyday practices are conditioned by specific maintenance strategies, including regulatory codes, ideologies and aesthetic regimes of public space.

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