Michael Hensel is an architect, researcher, educator and writer. He is Professor of Architecture at the Oslo School of Architecture and Design where he directs the Research Center for Architecture and Tectonics. He cofounded OCEAN in 1994, and is founding and current chairman of the OCEAN Design Research Association and the Sustainable Environment Association, as well as an editorial board member of Architectural Design (AD). He has co-guest-edited five titles of AD, including seminal issues on emergence and the architecture of Turkey and Iran. He is currently writing The Handbook for Traditional Sustainable Buildings for John Wiley & Sons.

Acknowledgements 005

Foreword by David Leatherbarrow 009

Introduction: The Task at Hand 015

Chapter 1: A Brief History of the Notion of Performance 017

Chapter 2: A Brief History of the Notion of Performance in Architecture 023

Chapter 3: Non-Discrete Architectures 031

Chapter 4: Non-Anthropocentric Architectures 045

Chapter 5: Traits of Performance-Oriented Architecture 053

Local Climate and Microclimate 057

Material Performance 059

The Active Boundary, the Articulated Envelope and Heterogeneous Environments 067

The Extended Threshold 082

Second-Degree Auxiliarity: Supplementary Architectures 095

First-Degree Auxiliarity: Embedded Architectures 109

Multiple Grounds and Settlement Patterns 116

Chapter 6: The Road(s) Ahead 133