But you have generalized it as conservative, which I agree on the way it was put. In its core sense, though, minimalism is not associated with conservatism. I wanted to make aware how many architects associate minimalism with Pawson and the likes, which is really stylized literalness. It is now really off topic. Let's just save it for a future discussion on minimalism.

great quote from A Z-P, sort of Deleuze-ian.

dadists and surrealists and their chance combination drawing technique's from 90 years ago where done for the same purpose as what people now producing 50 iterations of the same are doing, but via computers, and that is to see the range of possibilities, and discover ideas, that one couldn't find otherwise, because of their ingrained habits/patterns of thought that limit seeing/imagination. 

You chance produce 50 different combinations, look at them, and say hey, there's a funny idea over there in that one I didnt' see before. hey look at that combination, isn't that interesting, this thing could do that.  You do it to dig for ideas, and the computer does it faster. Nobody does 50 versions and then picks one at random? there is still always a process of judging and selecting ideas. Is what Eisenman is saying is that he has a problem with the basis on which students are judging, as not coming from a serious study of history or lack of interest in the history of architecture?  This is like the Peter Eisenman approach to architectural education vs. the Peter Cook approach.  The serious vs the weird and playful. 

The thing is, the judgement has to be in relation to the design problem that initiated the search for the unexpected/chance combination in the first place.  There could be some interesting ideas in these pictures that could solve the problem better than other formal ideas.  So it is a matter of what unexpected/discovered ideas best, most originally, respond to the constraints identified at the outset of the project. 

quondam those are nice paintings. Now, I don't want to question how you did them. You could have done them on a xerox machine as far as I am concerned. For me, you have 50 prints, I look at them as one show and I appreciate each tile as it has its own bayou. So I played and enjoyed. PE is also reasonable to ask you and I to stop and get into the building as we might do with paintings on the wall or sculptures in the space. At that point, of course, he is delightful, smart, interesting, even diagonally spiritual and all that. He is also pointing to obvious contentions.

You had some exchanges with PE regarding Rome. I never understood that. Can it be told here if somewhat relevant?

I think archigram did a good job of identifying a design problem and then through collaging, drawing, cut and paste, many different iterations, dug for some really unexpected and interesting solutions.  Peter Eisenman wants the history of architecture to be the prima materia for deconstruction.  Peter Cook will take anything from the world, the hans hollein 'everything is game for architecture'  to discover an idea.  

i am not necesarily advocating a single point of view, and not in defense of one over another, but I would like to push againt the suggestion that Eisenman does not work with his own non digital "algorithms".

Whereas he may present, rhetorically, his projects as being the result of an accountable and accounted for discursive method  (deconstructivist or otherwise ), his architectural translations somehow suggest otherwise - and I believe cannot but be otherwise. Like one of your variations taken by itself, quondam, his projects also bear, to those who face the product without the process,  a certain obscurily aleatory quality that does not contradict a process of variations but might well suggest it.

I think I know why I brought up minimalism now and it is because I envisage it as having an opposing ethos. There is a teleological drive where the product of an architectural process is, as inscribed within the term itself, about the conservation of what needs to be there and the elimination of what does not need to be there (this , Orhan, is why I called it literally conservative, not in the metaphoric political and moral spectrum of the meaning) - (of course, one can discuss the nature and the need for such a need). This doesn't, of course, imply that there were no variations in the process but that there is a clear aesthetic and moral process of elimination.

I do not see Eiseman being so compulsive in his translations from intention to product; there is a large obscure gap that  seems to remain in place, inspite of all the explications and suggests - or better, does not contradict- a variation-friendly process that does not need to find deterministic  architectonic relations. Perhaps, it is more illustrative and sketchy ...and here is where some might have issues with Eisenman: architecture used to sketch his supra (or extra-)architectural ideas. you might not like the point of the (non digital) "algorithm"which might not make for good architecture, as one sees it,  ...but not necessarily discount the presence of one (even if he doesn't mention it).

Of course I'm using the word algorithm here liberally, too liberally.

quondam, do those numbers and letters have other values, perhaps narrative connections? 

as a person who experiences visions of reality - all to real - dreams (even while awake) - Hynogogic states can be achieved while awake...

in line with Quondam's joy, I've downloaded this script today -

http://www.code-artists.de/pattern.html

couldn't afford the final product - http://www.automodeller.com/

not just numbers (well it really is) but it is 3D patterns on 3D geometries...

Schumacher does credit Eisenman in Autopoeisis, no? but more Christopher Alexander than anyone.

so that script (many algorithms) led to this after a while, surely through value judgements?

is it upside-down?

I speculated the idea that they might have numerological significances of relating to geographical places, coordinates, events, dates.. I didn't think the obvious; values of hues contrasts etc..

I think 100 years ago was the Beaux Arts people scoffed at the modernist revolution in much the same way as Eisenman scoffs at technology - 

PE has been a good mentor to some technologically talented people in architecture, I don't think he is really scoffing at technology that way but projecting into the specific shallowness in the architectural education and practice. He is scoffing the way technology hit the arc-street at the moment. Examples can be found in the architectural visualizations. Many of them copies of copies already. His position is very legit and serious. His point of view and criticism is needed. He's also authored a few but important built work and continues to develop projects, some under construction, he gets them.

This BOMB interview is kind of entertaining and also informative on some of his stances.

I have been inside the house VI as a traveling student. I remember its grid generated form and its pronounced scalework as an object, beautifully combusted precise space. It was one of those architectural milliseconds just keeps surviving in my mind.

Orhan,

I listened to the BOMB interview and it's precisely my issue with so much contemporary education, the same one I received in the late 80's when this guy was peaking.  Taking his students to see some show in Venice when all the students are like "why do we have to see this, (why can't we see the beauties of Venice)?"  And he responds with classic obfuscation..."because you have to ask that question, that's why."  Classic.

I think he has a point too, Orhan, but he didn't even come close to expressing it. 

PE & PS http://www.patrikschumacher.com/Texts/Radical%20Free%20Market%20Urbanism.html

Thank you Chatter. That was an interesting read. 

I got/learned two things came out of (maybe three)- at least I think I did.

The first is that when PE says PS's books argue that parametricim is "didactic, comprehensive, persuasive" it seems to me that he is synthesizing the content. That's a basic statement but for me it sets up the questions as to why he cannot leverage on the didactic part of the process as a part of teaching?

The second point is that PS's semantic layering references Herbert Simon work- pointing to a territory of thinking and valuing that needs to be mined more for it's role in creating roles the professional. I don't mean that sole in the sense of the designer, but in the formalization of a certain type of individual during the mid-20th. 

actually, it isurprised me that the dialogue brought up the aleatory aspect as I had only come across this (dialogue) after my posts here and while searching for instances of Schumacher on Eisenman or Eisenman on Schumacher. If you read through the dialogue and compare to many of the points raised here, it feels almost like they're responding to some of these points at least (whether one accepts or not their validity). 

I find it interesting that nearly every time (even if I may exagerrate here) Schumacher says something, he seduces my mind to go against it - almost as if his thèses, clear and intelligent as they are, are stealthily accompanied by their own clearly drawon out twin subversion.

quondam, honestly, I went back to check Eisenman's projects on his websites, without relating it to any of the rhetorical soundbytes. I already had the vague idea in mind but it grew clearer. I was also thinking, on the other polar end, of minimalism and how it develops through a method of elimination (whether of elements or of possibilities) such that it is driven towards a teleological end. almost as if it seeks its own inevitability. I would say that even critical regionalism tries to do that to some extent as well, within its own world of signifying towards context. anyway, looking at eisenman's projects, I was struck with both how obscure they were in terms of giving themselves up as products of a process where choices were compulsively eliminated, /developed within an architectural system, and this led me to believe (I don't know how PE works, so it is conjecture) that there was no such process therefore that the space for laissez-être, on the architectural side and not  on the conceptual engine side, was greater

In other words, the architecture seemed like the chance (therefore aleatory) by-product of a determined conceptual engine (this is why, I suppost, I said that it was architecture sketching out an idea). and it seems not at all contradictory that variations were produced by this conceptual engine. Looking at his projectswhich , there is somewhat of a nonchalance towards the gestalt that ties parts to whole, building to context and so on, proportions to each other, angles to each other. that means that not much done on that level and that most of the work happened between the conceptual engine and its de facto offsprings. does that make more sense?

i then decided to Google instances of PE on PS or PS on PE because i recalled vaguely a criticism PS had made of PE's work.

i realise that the above is not very clear. i am not in a moment of lucidity but there are glimmers on the walls.

but you do not have a conceptual purpose (other than to discover what this play will yield) behind this, quondam, if i am not mistaken.

to make another fold in this thread, in a way, quondam, do you not see that in playing this game, you are trying to make the aleatory seem less aleatory (by adjusting to fit your taste and by eliminating choices that do not please you) and that you are playing the interventionist designer. while eisenman more honestly accepts the aleatory nature of the product of his conceptual engine ?

also, do you not view that your engine/system is inherently valueless, isotropic in a way (the parameters are not ideologically thematic but rather operative) whereas that of eisenman is inherently one of a certain worldview value (the requirement to live to some association that he chooses as the basis of the design)?

which is to say , building on these two thoughts, that eisenman assigns value to the conceptual engine, a subjectivally chosen one, and accepts that the product inherits this value consequentially. whereas, what you do here, quondam, and, in a similar way, architecturally, what Schumacher and co do, is, starting from an objectively given conceptual engine,  is to derive that value in the constant play with this engine (inputting, feedback, etc) viewing the engine as nothing more than a utility, optimally the best utility technologially present at the moment (well, at least in Schumacher's case that seems more feasible  :0)

and to derive one more thing from this...does this not mean, in a rather funny way now, that in actual fact, Schumacher and co are more interventionist, more engaging within the process of design than PE, who would have us believe otherwise? this is turning itself Inside out.

and in a less person-centric way, the technology of the pen/pencil présents less of an objective space for the discovery of design opportunities than does the technology of computerized/parametric design? which is also a way to ask whether what is at stake here, behind the pen and the pencil, for PE, is the role of the architect as a subjective authority, even if hiding behind the veneer of conceptual associations (and in fact, both camps are guilty of that, i think). That the issue, in its depth, is not about design but about authority and the perceived right of authority.

What would you think about, erosion of "that" authority might be leading to the fundamental changes to services architects have been providing? How, then would architecture be commissioned as a product? You'd know, soon, the architect's authority of writing the conceptual script also assigned to the digital process the way the technology is slowly making its transition to add "think" to "draw."

Its moving toward creating algorithms and processes - the software will be the new drafter and modeler

given that most design work is now done on computers, the design moves of various designers can now be clearly recorded and eventually translated into an algorithm regardless of the purpose for the design moves........for instance, I want to emulate Zaha Hadid paintings of a city. In about 4 steps I could tell you how to do that in 3dsMax. Lets say those 4 steps become popular design filters, then maybe we get a "ZAHA" button in 3dsmax - a standard plugin......avoiding this may be PE's "resistance" comment. So in short - be yourself even if you are using a ZAHA filter on Robert AM Stern script and that means you might apply some PE stuff when appropriate.......The past has already happened and can be summarized, nothing wrong with assuming previous original acts of creativity as standard tools for design.......i.e. "you should make that window more Stevn Hollish and put some Richard Meier paneling over there, this way the entry area has a Zaha thing going on."

I'm already working with software that can model existing buildings and pipework extraction, these are boxes either.

Generating infinite alien cityscapes with algorithms

Fuck parametric design

any day, BulgarBlogger

doing some research and drinking...slightly related.... from Howard T. Odum's "Systems Ecology" 1983

"Patterns of logic actions are sequential in time, although often very fast.  The steps of sequential action are called programs." (p.72)

"Diagramming helps make verbal concepts precise and is a step to help simulation." (p.73)