This practice research project investigates the dramaturgical potential of architectural drawing techniques and proposes ‘architexting’ as creative methodology for exploring the hidden histories of built spaces. Architexting exploits the relationship between architectural drawing and playwriting as allographic practices, identifying generative territory in their mutual preoccupation with shaping provisional spaces. I suggest that architexting can be used as a tool for a spatial approach to historiography that is organised by site rather than time. In doing so, architexting seeks to reveal and celebrate diachronic communities separated by time but created and connected by the places they share.

This thesis is in three parts. In the first, ‘Project Plan and Methodology,’ I provide an overview of my interdisciplinary approach. In the second, ‘Site Analysis,’ I excavate relevant theoretical fields including architectural theory, dramaturgy, historiography and cultural geography to construct a theoretical framework for architexting. The third section, ‘Portfolio,’ forms the practical output of this project and consists of three architexts: Blueprint, Perspective and Axonometric or How to Build a Place from Memory, each with accompanying critical reflections.

While architexting is a methodology that may be applied to any building, this project specifically investigates the hidden histories of the Citizens Theatre in Glasgow which, in 2018, underwent the most significant redevelopment in its 144-year history. My architexts have been created using material from oral histories and workshops with over sixty adults and young people connected to the Citizens theatre, as well as archival material from relevant collections held by the Scottish Theatre Archives at the University of Glasgow.