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Given the digital times in which we live, there's something reassuring about the fact that intelligent, relevant and inspiring performing-arts venues are still managing to be designed and built. In all their glorious materiality, they cock a cultural snook at the ever-growing disembodied consumption of online and downloaded music, dance and other art forms.
Perhaps its a hard-wired social desire that we, as humans, have to congregate and experience performance en masse and unmediated, or maybe it has something to do with the perceived value of such buildings in terms of the cultural profile they can lend a city (and the economic benefits that often attend this), but, whatever the reasons for their continued need, a number of architects are ensuring that newly commissioned concert halls, opera houses and cultural centres in general are as performative in terms of their design as the activities they house.