can't exactly help with info for such an open-ended project. just brainstorm a little.

what kinds of spaces might lectures happen in? sure, lecture halls, but also classrooms, outdoors, amphitheaters, webcasts, etc. what are the characteristics of these spaces? why?

same with selling. what kinds of spaces are conducive to selling? stock trading floors? kmart? realtors' offices? dean & deluca?

start making lists and maybe accompany those with some diagrams of what the spaces might be.

Brainstorming: my first thought with "lecture and sell" as grouped terms is that the lecturing relates to the selling, like when you go to a book signing or when a band sells CDs and tshirts after a gig in a small venue.

Do you want the lecturing and selling to relate, or are they two functions that just happen to share a space? Right now it's so amorphous that it could be either.

lecture: one person addressing more than one person: a functional diagram with one end smaller than the other, hence your conical spaces like amphitheatres... the A/V comes along and distorts the diagram a bit... then the net comes along and blows it out the water :-)

selling might be similar: one product, as-many-as-possible consumers of said product. The product has to be presented as something projecting into the lives of many individuals... a vector, but a vector with some sort of modulation / sleight-of-hand, like the age-old advertising technique of selling one thing (say, perfumed liquid) by implying that it comes with another (hot babe, muscles, exotic location etc.)

beck's puppet-tron is a pretty amazing moebius 'lecture' space...

the live bad is front and center on stage.
behind them are some puppeteers performing a small real-time puppet simulation of the band playing.
a camera operator is on-stage, shooting the puppets.
the video feed from the camera is sent back behind the audience to a projector, which then displays the puppet-sim on a screen at the back of the stage, larger than life.


but as far as combining lecturing and selling - a church.

kahn's take on a lecture space

both might be said to share one primary characteristic: a focal point.

lecture's 'ell

I think Kahn's picture was also to define "School", basically an institution could be as simple as a place to gather beneath a tree. Still a nice photo of a poet's view of a space to lecture!

you callin me a poet?

or a quoter...