April 23, 2025

Set Pieces is reviewed by Erick Villagomez, Editor-in-Chief of Spacing.

In a media and cultural landscape shaped by screens, it may seem counterintuitive that live performance continues to command our attention and emotion. Yet, as Set Pieces: Architecture for the Performing Arts in Fifteen Fragments compellingly demonstrates, the architecture of live performance—its material presence, spatial intimacy, and urban connectivity—still holds profound sway over how we gather, listen, and feel.

Recipient of the 2025 RAIC Architectural Journalism and Media Award, and authored by Diamond Schmitt Architects with contributions from critics, artists, and designers, Set Pieces is an unconventional architectural monograph. Instead of organizing projects chronologically or by building type, the book is structured around fifteen “fragments”—architectural elements that frame, amplify, or transform the experience of live performance. These include lobbies, ceilings, staircases, balconies, wall panels, and even lighting devices—each explored through a close reading of specific projects.

What’s especially resonant is the book’s attention to how performance spaces interact with the public realm. In his foreword, Don Schmitt reflects on the firm’s early design for Covent Garden and their continuing focus on lobbies and thresholds—not just as ancillary spaces, but as civic rooms that dissolve boundaries between performer and audience, art and city. 

Architect Matthew Lella’s introductory essay, “A Way In,” sets the tone with personal and sensorial reflections on space and memory. He argues that architecture should be understood not just visually, but as an embodied experience—a theme echoed throughout the book. 

The book’s contributors— [Justin Davidson, Kate Wagner, Mimi Lien, Robert Lepage] — enrich the architectural perspective with broader cultural insight. […]

For urbanists, architects, designers, and cultural workers, Set Pieces is more than a monograph—it’s a meditation on how space becomes performance, and how performance, in turn, shapes our sense of place. It invites us to look beyond the stage and into the lobbies, stairwells, ceilings, and streetfronts where public life begins.

Read the full book review in Spacing.
Set Pieces is available for purchase on Birkhäuser.