There is a real need for this research because, surprisingly, there is no publication that provides a definitive history of the architecture of live popular music. This is not the case for classical music, which has a number of high-quality, well-researched studies, most notably Buildings for Music by Michael Forsyth, MIT Press, 1985 (reprinted 2004). The history of popular music is well documented in numerous excellent books, and its social, cultural impact has also been studied extensively. Examination of the human experience of popular music in terms of geographic place, image and identity is an established area of research, and the business of live popular music is also one that now has a growing range of important studies.

The author’s books Houses in Motion: The Genesis, History, and Development of the Portable Building, 1995, 2002, Portable Architecture, Architectural Press, 1996, 2000, 2003, Flexible: Architecture that Responds to Change, Laurence King, 2007, and Portable Architecture: Design and Technology, 2008, all have sections devoted to mobile and adaptive performance spaces by architects such as Mark Fisher and FTL Design and Engineering Studio. This work is therefore based in a foundation of investigation that goes back two decades.

This research, for the first time, examines in architectural terms the full range of popular music venues, and explore their significance as a distinct genre of buildings that has many sources of inspiration and routes to realisation. This is a building type that is an essential component in the success of an immensely popular and culturally significant phenomenon that describes so clearly (and with, of course, so many apparent contradictions) what people think about their way of life and place in society. The research crosses the boundaries between architecture, interior design, product design and popular music, cultural history, communication studies.