Umeå University's logo

This thesis investigates the theoretical framework of architecture’s role in performing and enacting fictions, positioning architecture as an artistic medium that has blurred the lines between reality and fiction. It explores the tools that architectural spaces use to direct and shape the behaviours of their users, enacting the participation in the scripted narratives. The research incorporates perspectives from philosophy, film, and scenography, to critically analyse how architecture influences the fictional perception and action of its users. Through examining the spectrum between real and fictional states, the thesis engages with notions such as visual culture, performativity and the semiotics of architecture, in its physical form and through its representation. It hopes to illustrate to which level the lived experience is mediated or manipulated by architecture, and the other way around.