Architecture in the Experience City

This article focuses on the combination of programs and the architecture of cultural projects that have emerged within the last few years. These projects are characterized in the article as ‘hybrid cultural projects', because they intend to combine experience with entertainment, play and learning. The article identifies new rationales related to this development, and it argues that ‘cultural planning' has increasingly shifted its focus from a cultural institutional approach to a more market-oriented strategy that combines art and business in a close relationship. The role of architecture has changed too. Architecture not only provides a functional framework for these concepts, but it increasingly tries to give the main idea of the cultural project a spatially aesthetic expression - a shift towards ‘experience architecture'. A great number of these projects typically recycles and reinterprets narratives related to historical buildings and architectural heritage; another group tries to embed new performative technologies in expressive architectural representation. The article provides a theoretical framework for the analysis of the political rationales of these projects and for the architectural representation between historical traces and new performance.