The event as architecture. Learning from pop-up urbanisms

Abstract

Over the last decades, urban events around ephemeral programs have multiplied and consolidated. Music festivals constitute a perfect example of a typology of urbanism that, equipped with budgets comparable to some more conventional types, generates urbanity and co-constructs our societies from a new metropolitan paradigm which is less dependent on form than on experience. This article will try to develop how the urban Event operates as Architecture. For such a purpose, its historical antecedents will be traced, identifying how the counterculture of the 60s provided a breeding ground for a new ephemeral typology supported by what could be defined as “pop-up urbanisms.” A methodology has been established by which the specific example of Pop Festivals is taken as a materialization of this metropolitan typology. Three types have been identified that, studied through three case studies, define the infrastructural schemes around the relationship of the Event with the territory and the city. Glastonbury, Lollapalooza and Burning Man will be analyzed to extract the particular characteristics of each type. Finally, the general conditions that define this typology with an expiration date will be stated. A typology in which “architectural form” corresponds to the “performance of the event.”