I think parametricism defines itself as pragmatic, isn't that what the name implies? As in, we deal with uncertainty and changing parameters and not with dead frozen blobs here.
The problem that I have with parametricism is that the parameters themselves are hardly ever defined - there are a bunch of components that can accomodate various changes is size, site, etc, and that can be very useful. But the narrative and scenario of these changes are hardly ever articulated and if you want parametricism to have any sort of meaning, isn't that what we should expect of it?
"revit-based parametrics of insert corporate office here"
I think this is the part I'm most interested in. I think this is also the part I'm terrified of.
I was playing with a parametric log cabin builder the other day... and woah! I think if I was doing this project for a client, I'd feel bad for charging them 10,000 dollars to add light sockets.
I think there is a bit of a misnomer with Google Streetview and Google Earth... well, and GIS all together. One could probably find parametrical concepts there but the foundation of GIS is wickedly simple.
I mean, GIS is like 98% SQL. When doing anything with GIS, all you are doing is establishing database relationships in a physical space. It's a giant flow chart!
There's a few companies right now that are working to 'parametricize' urban planning. That basically means when that software comes available and if it is easy to use, there will be a whole lot of consultants out of jobs.
But, the things these all rely on is not necessarily data... but referential data. Whether it is a formula, a street address, a component library, tax information or materials data... there's a requirement there that you must have A and B of "a+b=c."
Parametrics or not... formulas and computations aren't bring in clients.
There is also the catch-22 of the public's general refusal despite convincing data and models.
I'd say economic development and urban planning has learned this the hard way over the last decade that people love broke systems. They love it even better when you take a perfect working system and intentionally break it!
So, optimization and computation don't always mean anything!
got halfway through the schumacher/zellner tiff - it seems like zellner is being more critical of the overuse digital technologies in a general sense rather than parametricism itself. I agree that we seem to be losing some of our ability to conduct tactile exploration and discovery through happy accidents - but there's something to be said for the digital tools helping to augment and automate certain kinds of explorations.
To me the criticism is more in the realm of "is this stuff helping or hurting our ability to advance critically and intellectually?" which falls squarely within pedagogy and research. not that it's bad or good - It's how it's being used.
many of the entries/comments do not quite get the point of enunciating parametricism as style. A new style is much more than a new set of techniques - however powerful these techniques are (and they are very powerful). A new style in architecture/design is akin to a new paradigm in science: it redefines the fundamental categories, purposes, and methods of a coherent collective endeavour. Architecture can only progress via such collective endeavours where the different individual experiments and advances speak and contribute to each other. The progress of architecture must take the macro-form of a succession of styles and the micro-form of the advancement of the most fertile and pertinent style - measured in relation to the contemporary tasks posed by the evolution of society. Parametricism as style (paradigm or research programme) sets a clear ambition for the work with parametric tools: the intensification of relations on all levels (internal, external, across all scales). This ambition can be justified with respect to its adaptive pertinence with respect to post-fordist network society. This ambition can be operationalized by the formal and functional heuristics (the taboos and dogmas) of parametricism. ... In the discursive domain of the discipline Parametricism's antipode is minimalism (modernism's rearguard return despite the terminal crisis and ideological bankruptcy of modernism). With respect to the real world built environment parametricism stands against the anything goes urban scatter/fragmentation, against the disorienting cacophony of random juxtapositions that make orientation and local to global inferences all but impossible. The reality of the build environment is the real consequence of modernism's crisis. Postmodernism, and deconstructivism were the searching reactions within the discipline. The inability of pomo and decon to formulate a new viable paradigm led to the return of modernism in the guise of minimalism. Parametricism is yet to be put to the test. Can it deliver the rich, variegated, complex order that is able to serve as an organizing/articulating/catalytic substratum for contemporary life processes?
Until someone with deep pockets pays for whatever "ism" people are cooking up, I'll just keep looking at the pretty pictures generated from the computer.
18x32 The failures of Historical Postmodernism and Deconstructvism were largely a result of their becoming to rigidly defined by taboos and dogmas to actually deliver the spaces they had the promise to produce
hogwash, thats plain anthropo-psychologisms assigned to two constructs who's notion of a failures, of mortality, life and death are so so open to interpretation, a mild term. and dragged along are the notions of human hubris and irony. suddenly, this staging of a personless greekoid tragedy, we watch art mimic life as the mimicry of art. intellectual crocodilism, we wait beneath the turgidity of pseudointellectualism to drag any passing fickle cardboard gazelle into the murky darkness of our despairing hunger for fleshy ideas.
response to 18x32:
the style is mature as avant-garde style - its been maturing for over 10 years now (for instance AADRL exists since 1996) - that's a long time in architecture (modernism matured fully from 1920 to 1930). Parametricism is ready to go mainstream. The latest built works from ZHA are much more than experimental manifesto projects, they are succeeding as high performance projects in the real world. The Innsbruck train stations are a good example. No other style could have achieved this coincidence of adaptive variation to the different site conditions with genotypical coherence across those phenotypical variants.
another important point that you missed: parametricism as style is no longer only concerned with technique experiments - they continue anyway - but it is concerned with the question of the formal and functional ambitions according to which these techniques are to be employed.
It is necessary to operationalise the intuitive values of a style in order to make its hypotheses testable, to make its dissemination systematic, to be exposed to constructive criticism, including self-critique of the parametricist design work etc.
The aversion against "isms" seems sometimes to be an unthought gut reaction, fueled by an individualist ideology, and by a systematic misappreciation of the conditions of effective innovation. Not all "isms" are/have been dogmatic like stalinism.
are you denying the existence and developmental role of styles in the history of architecture? gothic, renaissance, baroque, neo-classicism, historicism, modernism, ...? did history come to an end? or did it fragment into crisscrossing and contradictory trajectories? are you celebrating this fragmentation of efforts?
(Mark Burry's work is great - much of Gaudi's original work at Sagrada is horrible amorphous/ornate, non-architetural abberation - for me Burry's Sagrada is an experimental manifesto conducted under awkward constraints)
... by the way its "Schumacher" not "Schumaker"
i was not aware of stalinism, a misnomer, being an -ism at all. saddamism rather than baathism?
question funny: did history come to an end?do we mortalize notions to enjoy watching them commit seppuku? do we also enjoy giving ourselves ulcers over nought? have we become both romans and jews?wasn't there a not too distant thread about Zaha now being a Shoe maker?
Modernism as an -ism really only matured due to the technological constraints of it being lifted.
If you really take a look at European styles between 900-1900, vernacular architecture is rife with "modernistic" styling. For instance, it is easy to draw many different correlations in design between French Medieval and Modernist designs.
Give this a different roof line and polish those stones... and it would be hard to separate this building from contemporary modernists buildings.
One thing people tend to ignore is that neoclassical, baroque and other various "continental" styles are quicker and by extension, cheaper. A lot of "continental" design is simplified through modularity-- pre-cast and pre-cut materials, moldings, standards in manufacturing processes et cetera.
It's also easier to hide details with ornamentation, encrustation and moldings.
Making straight, clean and well put together objects is a luxury of the modern world. If it wasn't for electric motors (and combustion engines), pneumatics and advanced metalurgy... modernism would have never matured like it did.
I think that's why we see the rapid expansion of modernism. I think there has always been an interest in crisp, clean pseudo-vernacular styles.
response to montagneux:
I am not including the vernacular within architecture. The title architecture should be reserved for self-conscious works by architects working within a discursive field. Modernism is a style within architecture as discursive field. For a building to be classified as modernism there must have been a designer who has lifted himself beyond the state of someone merely following an unspoken tradition.
The example also shows that your assimilation does not work. Modernism can not be defined by the mere absence of ornament! Read Corb's Towards a New Architecture! The vertical window formats of your example are already untypical for modernism.
response to 18x32:
I think the fragmentation of efforts made sense after the crisis of modernism since the 1970s. After 50 years of unshaken principles the crisis meant that a new way forward had to be looked for in many directions. But this splintering/spreading out must remain a transitional episode (pomo, celebration of the everyday/vernacular, decon). In this framented way it is impossible to formulate a new stage that can truly succeed modernism. So it is not a question of accepting/following the supposed "spirit of the age" but a question of giving leadership by showing a viable way forward. I am emphasising the coherency of a collective research effort. An updated concept of style as design research programme should mark this emphasis with a heavy weight term. This does not have be characterized as monolythic. There can be a rich division of labour within such an overall reaserch/development project. I also foresee the develpment of many substyles - like brutalism, high-tech developed within modernism. What I am talking about is a consistency of principles, ambitions and values so that efforts add up, are relevant to each other, compete constructively with each other, establishing the conditions for cummulative progress.
Schumacher is reflecting, rationalising and extrapolating what is going on now. He shows that real progress is possible now.
hi computer fans,
While we so called architects argue about what computer program to use keep in mind that the masons craft has changed very little for thousands of years only the means to bring the bricks and stone to the mason has changed.
parametricist, your discourse is flawed at the premise. You cannot compare changes in architectural style to science. Architecture is fashion, and architectural theory is an artistic conceit.
You say, "A new style in architecture/design is akin to a new paradigm in science: it redefines the fundamental categories, purposes, and methods of a coherent collective endeavour."
A new style in architecture is not similar to a scientific paradigm shift. Scientific paradigm shifts progress theory, not ideology. A theory gains credence based on its ability to explain phenomena better than the previous theory. The similarity between a scientific paradigm shift and a change in architectural style relates to the resistance of the old guard to the new idea, but this speaks to the ideological component of science, not the scientific component of architecture.
Architectural theory is almost pure ideology, not theory, and therefore it cannot experience paradigm shifts akin to science, as you say. What progresses are the tools, not the theory. To connect architectural style to theoretical discourse, you'd benefit by reading Pierre Bourdieu. Changes in architectural style have much more to do with class distinction than they do scientific method.
To suggest that modernism was in crisis speaks to your narrow understanding of the practice of architecture. You buy into the idea of a dominant narrative without acknowledging the subtle progression of all of the individual strains of modernism that led to your "new" style - Mies van der Rohe, Hugo Haring, Le Corbusier, Hans Scharoun, Alvar Aatlo, Giovanni Michelucci, the Smithsons, Enric Miralles, Alvaro Siza, and many others.
"Style" is a lame art-historical template. It isn't science, and it isn't that convincing when it comes to good work.
spaceman
... although your retort successfully troubleshoots a line between arch theory and metaphors of science, you spend a lot of energy picking on only one aspect of parametricist's differnt points...do you have some critique of parametricism or shumacher proper?
I am glad to see this thread revived, as I just wrote a paper on Schumacher for my Urbanism (Inaba) class.
I have to admit, I do not understand why Schumacher continues to say "style wars" in his articles...even the discussions here show that there are many nuances and categorical paradoxes when dealing with computational based architectural design , When I saw him speak, he seems to be super fired up about this being "style". How political?
I'd think most architects wouldn't lump themselves within a certain "style" - they'd more likely see themselves as part of a continuum of ideas.
anyway -could parametricism, in this case, possibly considered part of performatism?
my problem with schumacher (similar to spaceman) is that he lacks ideology - there's no central ideas in his proposal aside from "what the tools can do." IMO - parametricism is a technique, not a style.
Eshelman makes a better case for "performatism" as a new kind of stylistic tendency (or whatever the hell post-postmodernism is) - although I'm not completely sold on his argument, I do find his idea that architecture has become more about "aesthetic experience of transcendency" intriguing. I think Schumacher's (or ZHA's) work falls squarely within this idea.
In my opinion, style is a language. It is an abstraction, a map that we use to make an underlying territory of meaning understandable. It is the way practitioners make a connection with the people experiencing the design. It is a medium of communication.
I just read Schumacher's essy, and I agree that I don't see an idology. What I can't really find is any discussion of what the underlying message of the parametricist designs is. What values are they espousing? What are they trying to communicate to us? There is almost no discussion of people in the essay at all. This avenue of design, intriguing as it may be to aficionados, seems to have become so esoteric, so introspective, so self-referential, so divorced from humanity that it seems....lifeless?
To me, many of these designs feel like the product of an obscure, possibly sinister alien race... not human beings.
Schumacher's continued attempts to argue for a new and of age/contemporary style (especially post-boom) seems to be we all agree the real issue. What he is arguing for seems less a design style and more a tool?
Whether at the low end BIM or high digital avant garde scripting, end it seems that what we are really talking about is a new process of making. Not as someone put it earlier an art historical template framing.
That being said it isn't anything ideological that rubs me the wrong way, just curious timing to me. I am not sure though that i would prefer an more ideological tone, Toast. Perhaps, though his larger argument would be that technique is style?
Also when you said performatism i thought you were referring to the performative turn as in efficiency, bio-mechanical, being sort of sense. Which does seem to be a growing trend. After reading the link though, not sure that "aesthetic experience of transcendency" is apt only because for me Schumacher's parametric proposal seems to exclude the person for whom transcendence would occur. With parametricsm transcendence almost it seems occurs in the process of form making.
And as for any difference between Roche and Schumacher I think the absence of Surreal in the later is probably the first thing that jumps out. For Roche the emphasis seems to be paradigms/dreams and Schumacher numbers/analysis.
ff33º
No, I don't have a critique of the use of parametric design tools in pursuit of architecture. I have a critique of the attempt at discursive legitimation that Mr. Schumacher presents as a manifesto.
To put it in broad terms, the Schumacher argument seems to be that the use of parametrically informed designs are superior to other approaches because they are pliable, etc. and therefore able to adapt to the specific requirements of any program, any scale, and provide the right space. This is a type of scientific-deterministic line of thought that presupposes that human activity is so specific and non-variable that it is best accommodated by snail shells. This is the extreme version of "form follows function." There is ample discourse to support the argument that the flexible, neutral, and adaptable organizations and spaces are more durable; the writings of Also Rossi and Rem Koolhaas come to mind.
There is also a rich history of individual architectural design solutions that is diminished by the simplistic categorization of styles.
Furthermore, the world doesn't need another war, even a style war, and it doesn't need a unifying style. If there is a Zeitgeist that characterizes our time in history, it is pluralistic and diverse, like our most advanced cities. Our Zeitgeist accommodates mutations, adaptations, and hybrids.
I must say, Schumacker's argument has "matured" in a way that I appreciate. Particularly, the recognition that "styles" build off of previous styles is a welcome development to the parametricist manifesto. Placing the genre in stark comparison to the repetition of modernism and by going to great lengths to define what the genre is not, (deconstructivism, minimalism, etc..) the argument that technological developments of today will allow the genre to be more readily practiced is a simple argument, but a strong one.
By arguing that only Gehry could do Gehry because only he had the resources to implement Catia into his offices and the client base to pay for such expensive and elaborate designs strengthens the argument that deconstructionism was not for the masses. By simply alluding to the fact that "everyone can do this shit now" actually resonates with me. I know I've simplified his argument, but beyond the theoretical, cultural, transitional-style-it-is-not argument, the accessibility to parametricism as a new paradigm for innovation at various scales by various architecture firm skill levels is the strongest part of the argument that the "style" is here to stay.
nam - I was making the categorization based on the visual examples in schumacher's essay.
if schumacher claims "style" he needs to give more examples beyond just what his office is doing. it's one thing to talk about technique and process, but for me to be sold I need to see some specific examples of what he's talking about.
also - I can use parametric techniques (generative algorithms, dynamic components, nurbs) to design pomo colonial village knock-offs and strip malls - the process is not exclusive to a particular aesthetic.
IMO - there's something greater going on (which schumacher alludes to), and I think "parametricism" is an inadequate term.
"also - I can use parametric techniques (generative algorithms, dynamic components, nurbs) to design pomo colonial village knock-offs and strip malls - the process is not exclusive to a particular aesthetic."
"IMO - there's something greater going on (which schumacher alludes to), and I think "parametricism" is an inadequate term."
If this is true (and I believe you are correct), then "parametricism" is a tool, a method, and not a style.
I am realy sad my english is so bad and when I think of a form, I only think how to calculate that form into building parts. I just want to push the button and then just that form or any other forms compoments are cut -- parametic, well we has our idears about exactly what that is, -- it make it possible to change things and still the program calculate it's pieces, I bet it is a 3D model and the problem basicly are that today a house are made from a hundred different things, -- now what if it was made from just one, one that can be calcuated from the form it shal build. Now if you want to design with recursive rutines, that's fine for me, but the real issue is, -- how will you translate the form, into the compoments that build. Wonder how parametic 3dh is ; you change the form and still it is the same for the method, 3dh just cuts orher shapes to make that form. for me, that is plenty parametic, parametic with no nonsense.
Very entertaining thread but I hate to break it you
Architecture has always been very parametric in theory and only now do we have the tools to make architecture a science of parameters.
Desire and intuition can all be measured on a social level,l this is what economists do.
Schumacher is just doing what einstain did for physics and nietzdche for philosophy of western society - he is presenting the latent yet should be obvious fact of the field that only a few are in touch with. The naysayers are like the religious folk who still disagree with nietzsche.
This is a really funny discussion.
I wrote a full thesis on parametrics and surrealism, and I can tell you this: just because you can't script as fast as you draw, doesn't mean some of us can't.
i'm so sad i was at work while schumacher was lecturing at columbia on wednesday :-(
In 1988, I use to work for a flight simulator company in Sunnnyvale, Ca, engaged in 3D modeling of terrain, cities, airbases, airports, and other east blok stuff to practice blowing up. We had a program or rather a suite of programs called Dream. With Dream, we would write scripts in C code to create the 3D environment to later fly in. The beauty of this, is that with every object parameterized, we could create "families" of windows, walls, aircraft parts, runways, Russian Migs... Dream was great - provided the designers were really interested in programming and mathematics. One of our leaders, a fresh grad from Cal Poly's arch program became a programmer, and was very good at merging the ideas of parametric programming and modeling procedural algorithms and architecture. Most of the designers at Link simulation did not like Dream - "its's a damn black box that required that we become programmers" "I am a designer, not some geek" er right okay - okay
Thus started a battle that rages to this day - I believe BIM/Revit has gone a long way to reconcile the differences between parametric design and interactive design. That being said, the programmatic/expression interface in the family editor needs to be even more intuitive - in many large firms, there are people who are just family modelers creating "black boxes" for the designers to manipulate – The designers need to create thier own families – but in order for that to occur, Autodesk needs to make the parametric process easier – nothing stresses the designers more than to have on Friday deadline nights to face constraint errors of curtain wall panel families because the person who created them didn’t bother to test the parameters and left early that day(5pm to catch the BART back to Oakland) and the team was left in a lurch to use drafting lines over white filled regions to patch over the broken family member.
PARAMETRICISM is just a tool to compute our forms people!!!!
But it brings about one important aspect that was lost from architecture : MATHEMATICS.
one big advantage of using parametric software is: automation and less time cadding and more time dedicated to critical thinking... to which architecture is really about
I thought I would learn grasshopper to help me out with a nice little problem I have been working on for a few years now. I tinkered, but utlimately it didnt provide the results I wanted.
The lesson is that if everyone has the same tools, you get the same results. I am reminded of the William Blake who said "I must create my own system or be enslaved by another man's". So thats what I am doing now.
The mathematicians and IT geeks rule this world. And yet again, architects are scrambling around trying to apply methodologies and justifications to an external tool and struggling to find meaning. The trouble with numbers is that they are omniscient and meaningless.
The only use for parametricism [in the broadest sense] is where, as a tool, it allows a greater level of control to the architect for fabrication of buildings, in hand with architects actually having physical and financial ownership over the process.
Reminds me of this A.Aalto quote: he said he was excited & supportive of modular systems, as long as the size of the basic module doesn't exceed 1mm...
Rereading this thread, spaceman summed the whole thing quite concisely.
Parametricism = tool, not style.
Schumacher = really really excited about this.
---
Stuff that relies solely on parametric solutions do have a similar look - but it's more a kind of wistfull pattern making in an "organic" vein, rather than anything based on optimization, the organizing and managing of diverse objects and their attributes. So, as far as parametricism can be identified as architecture that "looks like something" - having a distinct style, the ideological grounds are twofold: simultaneously a reliance on mathematics and a bent towards the the forms of observable nature.
also, parametricism seems a piece of a something greater.
over the next fifty years, it may be that parametricism and evidence-based design and the increasing importance of building performance validation and the need to keep living models of buildings and a revolution in the way specs are kept and all data managed and the incorporation of graphical programming languages and the incorporation of realtime rendering and building performance tools such as ecotect and trelligence affinity all grow together to form a mature BIM technology --- and in hindsight, the vogue of "parametricism" will be a historical moment in time when this one aspect of design, the development of this one thread of the forthcoming mature BIM, stood out clearly and distinctly as its own focus area within the discipline and claims its own distinct theoretical lineage.
in summary, i think it is a piece in co-evolution with others, but not an end in itself (which is how it is often framed and referenced when most criticized).
parameters, seems like a daily factor on every job, whether its Zoning, Building Code, Cost, and misc. other request.
A zoning study is a BIM parametric model, duh.
i know i know, we're talking about that fancy algorithmic shit...but utlimately the very fundamental principle of making design decisions is based on paremeter effecting your choice.
parametricism is as close to modernism this generation will ever get.
so get over it, Schumacher is excited about something applicable to the profession and not some trend like Deconstunisms, etc...
parametricism is inherent in practice, but there is a shift occurring.
as was explained to me on a related matter, we are kind of where personal computers and to some extent, software development was in the seventies. companies, individuals, lone geniuses all developed their methods and products in their own individual ways and standardization was inconsistent and localized, usually to individual firms or companies at best --- but changes in technology and (due to scale, complexity and rate of change) method led to standardization around certain technologies and protocols
once the concept of what the personal computer and its user experience should be and how they should function began to solidify through consensus, and once computer engineers and software developers began to buy into industry standards for form and function, once consumers and users knew what they were getting, it opened up the industry and led to a 30+ year boom in development during which not only did the industry grow but the quality and power of products improved at an exponential rate
building design is approaching a similar moment --- you are correct about parametricism being inherent in modernism already --- and there is actually a great article written by Gordon Pask (i believe in 1969) in AD magazine in which he basically said that the architectural design process is a systems design process already and so architects should play an increasing role in the way data is operationalized in the development and assessment of form and function --- industry conditions are leading to standardization around performance and modeling standards (and a broader acceptable that universal standards are valuable) so that data, information and models can be shared for collaborative and validation purposes
from such a perspective, "parametricism" is just one component and quickly becoming a historical one at that --- but many of the other necessary components are clearly co-evolving with it and soon they will coalesce
Good point jmagnelli, I always related trends in architecture back to other fields, it seems like we are always a few generations behind.
This is also why I have fully subscribed to Autodesk, even if they are not the best software now ultimately you will only have two choices Autodesk or Bentley
parametricism is only close to modernism if you play the post-parametrization game instead of actually using parametric tools as form generators. then you want to explore variance within specific constraints, and then chance comes into play, and you'll find you're far closer to the surrealists than to corb when that happens.
"instead of actually using parametric tools as form generators."
the means may not resonate with a modernist approach, but doesn't the intent to identify the underlying order and the faith in the solution b/c of the rigors of its method
but a good point nonetheless.
i think i was sloppy with my reference to pask.
i was wrong in relating pask's article to modernism --- his background in cybernetics and systems seems to place him outside of the shift from modern to post-modern and such a systems approach has elements of both which makes it an awkward fit in either
rather, he seems to participate in an alternative trajectory that never gained wide appeal, at least not at the time
one interesting thing about post-occupancy and performance analysis (it's usually only done by a small fraction of government agencies) is that they're discovering that before-cheap-oil structures often perform much better in both flexibility of use and energy consumption.
the big thing we all seem to fail to understand in these highly programmed/designed closed systems (modeled and tested in environmental analysis software + informational minutia via BIM; all done after we've developed some kind of conceptual "form") is that people still use these buildings and they often don't behave as we think they should - plus these buildings aren't adaptable to changes in how we use them over time, and they lack basic redundancy in their systems and layout in order to accommodate compartmentalization, contraction and/or expansion. we're not designing bridges which we'll always use the same way (until someone invents flying cars) - we design buildings where things change every decade or so...
.....
Islamic architecture is highly parametric, btw... not blobby sculptural forms where you apply parametric tools to generate your structural/material systems so it can actually be built, but self-similarity and algorithmic repetition of simple forms based on a few cultural/religious rules + limitations of materials that allow for changes in scale of use over time. the closest modern example of culturally-driven formal parameters is our zoning and building codes and building component standardization, but without the aesthetic and political limitations.
IMO, what ZHA and schumacher are doing is formal/gestural manipulation and applying parametric tools to facilitate construction - if he was really doing parametric/algorithmic design his stuff would look more like a continuation of the work of people like van eyck, hertzberger, and the metabolists - who viewed the creation of their set of rules as a catalyst for total design and future manipulation of their structures based on potential use. it seems more like he's laying out program the old-fashioned way and then "draping" a form over it.... if he were showing things like wall systems algorithmically derived to produce a certain set of acoustical properties within a new spec neighborhood generated from longest distances people could call out to each other - that worked from a whole range of scales and could continue on into infinity - then maybe I'd say ok - he's pushing parametric as a complete design methodology and potential "style," but the examples he gives do not show that (or maybe we haven't yet reached bramante's tempietto ala nurbs).
just to reiterate what I said before: a brick wall is parametric - it looks different than an amorphous metallic skin with parametrically generated panels, but they both use the same principle. the brick wall's algorithm is simpler, but it still has manipulated variables (coursing) and constants (brick module, extent of wall boundary). I think maybe the big leap over the past 10 years is the realization is that a brick wall is parametric.
I have a headache from reading all these posts.....I think all the above is proof as to why todays building (in general) suck. The imagination is perhaps grasping the technology du jour of the tool....but not of the design, the client, beauty, etc....
I think it is a tool, but will also influence architecture more than we think. Prior to the inventions of parametric design becoming a widely used tool, it would take someone years to intentionally design something as complex as you can with a parametric program. *To be clear, I'm talking specifically about organic or highly repetitive forms that are really the main point of parametric design. Also, when I say organic form, I mean spherical, curvy or the like. Additionally, form meaning shape, plan, section etc.. anything that has to do with a building design just so the I'm clear for the Archinect trolls and negative nancys* I had professors in school make jokes about "Why do you think most buildings are orthogonal?", referring to the difficulty of designing and actualizing an organic, angled or highly repetitive form. Now that designing a difficult form/building is possible, the trickle down effect will eventually work its way into average joe firms that utilize it to realize anything, budget allowing. Which brings me to my next point, post and beam steel construction was much more expensive when it wasn't industry standard. What happens when everybody starts building with designs from an organic parametric design, does it become industry standard and therefore cheaper to build that way? This is why I think it will change architecture's future, but I don't think it is an 'ism' and it never will be.
Btw phenomenology could use parametric design as a tool, so I don't see them as competing "theories". I don't know how or why parametric design would ever be considered a theory.. however, object oriented philosophy (which seems to be parametric designs older brother) and phenomenology could definitely duke it out. I think this is why parametric design is a tool, it can be implemented in so many ways to say so many different things.. that's like saying BIM is a theory.. doesn't make sense to me.
Parametricism vs. ?
I think parametricism defines itself as pragmatic, isn't that what the name implies? As in, we deal with uncertainty and changing parameters and not with dead frozen blobs here.
The problem that I have with parametricism is that the parameters themselves are hardly ever defined - there are a bunch of components that can accomodate various changes is size, site, etc, and that can be very useful. But the narrative and scenario of these changes are hardly ever articulated and if you want parametricism to have any sort of meaning, isn't that what we should expect of it?
USC has released video footage from the conference that inspired this thread.
http://arch-pubs.usc.edu/parasite/intensive-fields/video-archive/
and accompanying blog entries http://arch-pubs.usc.edu/parasite/
"revit-based parametrics of insert corporate office here"
I think this is the part I'm most interested in. I think this is also the part I'm terrified of.
I was playing with a parametric log cabin builder the other day... and woah! I think if I was doing this project for a client, I'd feel bad for charging them 10,000 dollars to add light sockets.
I think there is a bit of a misnomer with Google Streetview and Google Earth... well, and GIS all together. One could probably find parametrical concepts there but the foundation of GIS is wickedly simple.
I mean, GIS is like 98% SQL. When doing anything with GIS, all you are doing is establishing database relationships in a physical space. It's a giant flow chart!
There's a few companies right now that are working to 'parametricize' urban planning. That basically means when that software comes available and if it is easy to use, there will be a whole lot of consultants out of jobs.
But, the things these all rely on is not necessarily data... but referential data. Whether it is a formula, a street address, a component library, tax information or materials data... there's a requirement there that you must have A and B of "a+b=c."
Parametrics or not... formulas and computations aren't bring in clients.
There is also the catch-22 of the public's general refusal despite convincing data and models.
I'd say economic development and urban planning has learned this the hard way over the last decade that people love broke systems. They love it even better when you take a perfect working system and intentionally break it!
So, optimization and computation don't always mean anything!
thanks for posting the talks...
got halfway through the schumacher/zellner tiff - it seems like zellner is being more critical of the overuse digital technologies in a general sense rather than parametricism itself. I agree that we seem to be losing some of our ability to conduct tactile exploration and discovery through happy accidents - but there's something to be said for the digital tools helping to augment and automate certain kinds of explorations.
To me the criticism is more in the realm of "is this stuff helping or hurting our ability to advance critically and intellectually?" which falls squarely within pedagogy and research. not that it's bad or good - It's how it's being used.
many of the entries/comments do not quite get the point of enunciating parametricism as style. A new style is much more than a new set of techniques - however powerful these techniques are (and they are very powerful). A new style in architecture/design is akin to a new paradigm in science: it redefines the fundamental categories, purposes, and methods of a coherent collective endeavour. Architecture can only progress via such collective endeavours where the different individual experiments and advances speak and contribute to each other. The progress of architecture must take the macro-form of a succession of styles and the micro-form of the advancement of the most fertile and pertinent style - measured in relation to the contemporary tasks posed by the evolution of society. Parametricism as style (paradigm or research programme) sets a clear ambition for the work with parametric tools: the intensification of relations on all levels (internal, external, across all scales). This ambition can be justified with respect to its adaptive pertinence with respect to post-fordist network society. This ambition can be operationalized by the formal and functional heuristics (the taboos and dogmas) of parametricism. ... In the discursive domain of the discipline Parametricism's antipode is minimalism (modernism's rearguard return despite the terminal crisis and ideological bankruptcy of modernism). With respect to the real world built environment parametricism stands against the anything goes urban scatter/fragmentation, against the disorienting cacophony of random juxtapositions that make orientation and local to global inferences all but impossible. The reality of the build environment is the real consequence of modernism's crisis. Postmodernism, and deconstructivism were the searching reactions within the discipline. The inability of pomo and decon to formulate a new viable paradigm led to the return of modernism in the guise of minimalism. Parametricism is yet to be put to the test. Can it deliver the rich, variegated, complex order that is able to serve as an organizing/articulating/catalytic substratum for contemporary life processes?
Until someone with deep pockets pays for whatever "ism" people are cooking up, I'll just keep looking at the pretty pictures generated from the computer.
18x32 The failures of Historical Postmodernism and Deconstructvism were largely a result of their becoming to rigidly defined by taboos and dogmas to actually deliver the spaces they had the promise to produce
hogwash, thats plain anthropo-psychologisms assigned to two constructs who's notion of a failures, of mortality, life and death are so so open to interpretation, a mild term. and dragged along are the notions of human hubris and irony. suddenly, this staging of a personless greekoid tragedy, we watch art mimic life as the mimicry of art. intellectual crocodilism, we wait beneath the turgidity of pseudointellectualism to drag any passing fickle cardboard gazelle into the murky darkness of our despairing hunger for fleshy ideas.
response to 18x32:
the style is mature as avant-garde style - its been maturing for over 10 years now (for instance AADRL exists since 1996) - that's a long time in architecture (modernism matured fully from 1920 to 1930). Parametricism is ready to go mainstream. The latest built works from ZHA are much more than experimental manifesto projects, they are succeeding as high performance projects in the real world. The Innsbruck train stations are a good example. No other style could have achieved this coincidence of adaptive variation to the different site conditions with genotypical coherence across those phenotypical variants.
another important point that you missed: parametricism as style is no longer only concerned with technique experiments - they continue anyway - but it is concerned with the question of the formal and functional ambitions according to which these techniques are to be employed.
It is necessary to operationalise the intuitive values of a style in order to make its hypotheses testable, to make its dissemination systematic, to be exposed to constructive criticism, including self-critique of the parametricist design work etc.
The aversion against "isms" seems sometimes to be an unthought gut reaction, fueled by an individualist ideology, and by a systematic misappreciation of the conditions of effective innovation. Not all "isms" are/have been dogmatic like stalinism.
are you denying the existence and developmental role of styles in the history of architecture? gothic, renaissance, baroque, neo-classicism, historicism, modernism, ...? did history come to an end? or did it fragment into crisscrossing and contradictory trajectories? are you celebrating this fragmentation of efforts?
(Mark Burry's work is great - much of Gaudi's original work at Sagrada is horrible amorphous/ornate, non-architetural abberation - for me Burry's Sagrada is an experimental manifesto conducted under awkward constraints)
... by the way its "Schumacher" not "Schumaker"
i was not aware of stalinism, a misnomer, being an -ism at all. saddamism rather than baathism?
question funny: did history come to an end?do we mortalize notions to enjoy watching them commit seppuku? do we also enjoy giving ourselves ulcers over nought? have we become both romans and jews?wasn't there a not too distant thread about Zaha now being a Shoe maker?
Modernism as an -ism really only matured due to the technological constraints of it being lifted.
If you really take a look at European styles between 900-1900, vernacular architecture is rife with "modernistic" styling. For instance, it is easy to draw many different correlations in design between French Medieval and Modernist designs.
Give this a different roof line and polish those stones... and it would be hard to separate this building from contemporary modernists buildings.
One thing people tend to ignore is that neoclassical, baroque and other various "continental" styles are quicker and by extension, cheaper. A lot of "continental" design is simplified through modularity-- pre-cast and pre-cut materials, moldings, standards in manufacturing processes et cetera.
It's also easier to hide details with ornamentation, encrustation and moldings.
Making straight, clean and well put together objects is a luxury of the modern world. If it wasn't for electric motors (and combustion engines), pneumatics and advanced metalurgy... modernism would have never matured like it did.
I think that's why we see the rapid expansion of modernism. I think there has always been an interest in crisp, clean pseudo-vernacular styles.
response to montagneux:
I am not including the vernacular within architecture. The title architecture should be reserved for self-conscious works by architects working within a discursive field. Modernism is a style within architecture as discursive field. For a building to be classified as modernism there must have been a designer who has lifted himself beyond the state of someone merely following an unspoken tradition.
The example also shows that your assimilation does not work. Modernism can not be defined by the mere absence of ornament! Read Corb's Towards a New Architecture! The vertical window formats of your example are already untypical for modernism.
response to 18x32:
I think the fragmentation of efforts made sense after the crisis of modernism since the 1970s. After 50 years of unshaken principles the crisis meant that a new way forward had to be looked for in many directions. But this splintering/spreading out must remain a transitional episode (pomo, celebration of the everyday/vernacular, decon). In this framented way it is impossible to formulate a new stage that can truly succeed modernism. So it is not a question of accepting/following the supposed "spirit of the age" but a question of giving leadership by showing a viable way forward. I am emphasising the coherency of a collective research effort. An updated concept of style as design research programme should mark this emphasis with a heavy weight term. This does not have be characterized as monolythic. There can be a rich division of labour within such an overall reaserch/development project. I also foresee the develpment of many substyles - like brutalism, high-tech developed within modernism. What I am talking about is a consistency of principles, ambitions and values so that efforts add up, are relevant to each other, compete constructively with each other, establishing the conditions for cummulative progress.
Schumacher is reflecting, rationalising and extrapolating what is going on now. He shows that real progress is possible now.
... would like to revive this in light of Patrick's latest write-up on the field in the latest issue of the The Architect's Newspaper East.
No link to the article on their website as they don't print the entire hardcopy issue of the magazine online...
hi computer fans,
While we so called architects argue about what computer program to use keep in mind that the masons craft has changed very little for thousands of years only the means to bring the bricks and stone to the mason has changed.
curt: is this it?
http://www.archpaper.com/e-board_rev.asp?News_ID=4623
parametricist, your discourse is flawed at the premise. You cannot compare changes in architectural style to science. Architecture is fashion, and architectural theory is an artistic conceit.
You say, "A new style in architecture/design is akin to a new paradigm in science: it redefines the fundamental categories, purposes, and methods of a coherent collective endeavour."
A new style in architecture is not similar to a scientific paradigm shift. Scientific paradigm shifts progress theory, not ideology. A theory gains credence based on its ability to explain phenomena better than the previous theory. The similarity between a scientific paradigm shift and a change in architectural style relates to the resistance of the old guard to the new idea, but this speaks to the ideological component of science, not the scientific component of architecture.
Architectural theory is almost pure ideology, not theory, and therefore it cannot experience paradigm shifts akin to science, as you say. What progresses are the tools, not the theory. To connect architectural style to theoretical discourse, you'd benefit by reading Pierre Bourdieu. Changes in architectural style have much more to do with class distinction than they do scientific method.
To suggest that modernism was in crisis speaks to your narrow understanding of the practice of architecture. You buy into the idea of a dominant narrative without acknowledging the subtle progression of all of the individual strains of modernism that led to your "new" style - Mies van der Rohe, Hugo Haring, Le Corbusier, Hans Scharoun, Alvar Aatlo, Giovanni Michelucci, the Smithsons, Enric Miralles, Alvaro Siza, and many others.
"Style" is a lame art-historical template. It isn't science, and it isn't that convincing when it comes to good work.
spaceman
... although your retort successfully troubleshoots a line between arch theory and metaphors of science, you spend a lot of energy picking on only one aspect of parametricist's differnt points...do you have some critique of parametricism or shumacher proper?
I am glad to see this thread revived, as I just wrote a paper on Schumacher for my Urbanism (Inaba) class.
I have to admit, I do not understand why Schumacher continues to say "style wars" in his articles...even the discussions here show that there are many nuances and categorical paradoxes when dealing with computational based architectural design , When I saw him speak, he seems to be super fired up about this being "style". How political?
I'd think most architects wouldn't lump themselves within a certain "style" - they'd more likely see themselves as part of a continuum of ideas.
anyway -could parametricism, in this case, possibly considered part of performatism?
my problem with schumacher (similar to spaceman) is that he lacks ideology - there's no central ideas in his proposal aside from "what the tools can do." IMO - parametricism is a technique, not a style.
Eshelman makes a better case for "performatism" as a new kind of stylistic tendency (or whatever the hell post-postmodernism is) - although I'm not completely sold on his argument, I do find his idea that architecture has become more about "aesthetic experience of transcendency" intriguing. I think Schumacher's (or ZHA's) work falls squarely within this idea.
anyone else's thoughts?
like the parametricist zaha hadid man said, you parametricists still dont have a leg to stand on.
other names for competing ideas trying to lay claim to post-postmodernism:
altermodern
automodernity
digimodernism
anyway...
I do think we're at the beginning of another stylistic epoch, and the race is on to name it - schumacher's got at least that part right.
In my opinion, style is a language. It is an abstraction, a map that we use to make an underlying territory of meaning understandable. It is the way practitioners make a connection with the people experiencing the design. It is a medium of communication.
I just read Schumacher's essy, and I agree that I don't see an idology. What I can't really find is any discussion of what the underlying message of the parametricist designs is. What values are they espousing? What are they trying to communicate to us? There is almost no discussion of people in the essay at all. This avenue of design, intriguing as it may be to aficionados, seems to have become so esoteric, so introspective, so self-referential, so divorced from humanity that it seems....lifeless?
To me, many of these designs feel like the product of an obscure, possibly sinister alien race... not human beings.
Schumacher's continued attempts to argue for a new and of age/contemporary style (especially post-boom) seems to be we all agree the real issue. What he is arguing for seems less a design style and more a tool?
Whether at the low end BIM or high digital avant garde scripting, end it seems that what we are really talking about is a new process of making. Not as someone put it earlier an art historical template framing.
That being said it isn't anything ideological that rubs me the wrong way, just curious timing to me. I am not sure though that i would prefer an more ideological tone, Toast. Perhaps, though his larger argument would be that technique is style?
Also when you said performatism i thought you were referring to the performative turn as in efficiency, bio-mechanical, being sort of sense. Which does seem to be a growing trend. After reading the link though, not sure that "aesthetic experience of transcendency" is apt only because for me Schumacher's parametric proposal seems to exclude the person for whom transcendence would occur. With parametricsm transcendence almost it seems occurs in the process of form making.
And as for any difference between Roche and Schumacher I think the absence of Surreal in the later is probably the first thing that jumps out. For Roche the emphasis seems to be paradigms/dreams and Schumacher numbers/analysis.
ff33º
No, I don't have a critique of the use of parametric design tools in pursuit of architecture. I have a critique of the attempt at discursive legitimation that Mr. Schumacher presents as a manifesto.
To put it in broad terms, the Schumacher argument seems to be that the use of parametrically informed designs are superior to other approaches because they are pliable, etc. and therefore able to adapt to the specific requirements of any program, any scale, and provide the right space. This is a type of scientific-deterministic line of thought that presupposes that human activity is so specific and non-variable that it is best accommodated by snail shells. This is the extreme version of "form follows function." There is ample discourse to support the argument that the flexible, neutral, and adaptable organizations and spaces are more durable; the writings of Also Rossi and Rem Koolhaas come to mind.
There is also a rich history of individual architectural design solutions that is diminished by the simplistic categorization of styles.
Furthermore, the world doesn't need another war, even a style war, and it doesn't need a unifying style. If there is a Zeitgeist that characterizes our time in history, it is pluralistic and diverse, like our most advanced cities. Our Zeitgeist accommodates mutations, adaptations, and hybrids.
Also I think "parametricist" might be Schumacher.
thanks Toaster, yep, that's it!
I must say, Schumacker's argument has "matured" in a way that I appreciate. Particularly, the recognition that "styles" build off of previous styles is a welcome development to the parametricist manifesto. Placing the genre in stark comparison to the repetition of modernism and by going to great lengths to define what the genre is not, (deconstructivism, minimalism, etc..) the argument that technological developments of today will allow the genre to be more readily practiced is a simple argument, but a strong one.
By arguing that only Gehry could do Gehry because only he had the resources to implement Catia into his offices and the client base to pay for such expensive and elaborate designs strengthens the argument that deconstructionism was not for the masses. By simply alluding to the fact that "everyone can do this shit now" actually resonates with me. I know I've simplified his argument, but beyond the theoretical, cultural, transitional-style-it-is-not argument, the accessibility to parametricism as a new paradigm for innovation at various scales by various architecture firm skill levels is the strongest part of the argument that the "style" is here to stay.
nam - I was making the categorization based on the visual examples in schumacher's essay.
if schumacher claims "style" he needs to give more examples beyond just what his office is doing. it's one thing to talk about technique and process, but for me to be sold I need to see some specific examples of what he's talking about.
also - I can use parametric techniques (generative algorithms, dynamic components, nurbs) to design pomo colonial village knock-offs and strip malls - the process is not exclusive to a particular aesthetic.
IMO - there's something greater going on (which schumacher alludes to), and I think "parametricism" is an inadequate term.
sounds to me like Zaha Hadid architects is going through a midlife crisis.
"also - I can use parametric techniques (generative algorithms, dynamic components, nurbs) to design pomo colonial village knock-offs and strip malls - the process is not exclusive to a particular aesthetic."
"IMO - there's something greater going on (which schumacher alludes to), and I think "parametricism" is an inadequate term."
If this is true (and I believe you are correct), then "parametricism" is a tool, a method, and not a style.
toast agreed
I am realy sad my english is so bad and when I think of a form, I only think how to calculate that form into building parts. I just want to push the button and then just that form or any other forms compoments are cut -- parametic, well we has our idears about exactly what that is, -- it make it possible to change things and still the program calculate it's pieces, I bet it is a 3D model and the problem basicly are that today a house are made from a hundred different things, -- now what if it was made from just one, one that can be calcuated from the form it shal build. Now if you want to design with recursive rutines, that's fine for me, but the real issue is, -- how will you translate the form, into the compoments that build. Wonder how parametic 3dh is ; you change the form and still it is the same for the method, 3dh just cuts orher shapes to make that form. for me, that is plenty parametic, parametic with no nonsense.
parametric architecture = buildings with no identity
Very entertaining thread but I hate to break it you
Architecture has always been very parametric in theory and only now do we have the tools to make architecture a science of parameters.
Desire and intuition can all be measured on a social level,l this is what economists do.
Schumacher is just doing what einstain did for physics and nietzdche for philosophy of western society - he is presenting the latent yet should be obvious fact of the field that only a few are in touch with. The naysayers are like the religious folk who still disagree with nietzsche.
This is a really funny discussion.
I wrote a full thesis on parametrics and surrealism, and I can tell you this: just because you can't script as fast as you draw, doesn't mean some of us can't.
i'm so sad i was at work while schumacher was lecturing at columbia on wednesday :-(
"DREAM" on
In 1988, I use to work for a flight simulator company in Sunnnyvale, Ca, engaged in 3D modeling of terrain, cities, airbases, airports, and other east blok stuff to practice blowing up. We had a program or rather a suite of programs called Dream. With Dream, we would write scripts in C code to create the 3D environment to later fly in. The beauty of this, is that with every object parameterized, we could create "families" of windows, walls, aircraft parts, runways, Russian Migs... Dream was great - provided the designers were really interested in programming and mathematics. One of our leaders, a fresh grad from Cal Poly's arch program became a programmer, and was very good at merging the ideas of parametric programming and modeling procedural algorithms and architecture. Most of the designers at Link simulation did not like Dream - "its's a damn black box that required that we become programmers" "I am a designer, not some geek" er right okay - okay
Thus started a battle that rages to this day - I believe BIM/Revit has gone a long way to reconcile the differences between parametric design and interactive design. That being said, the programmatic/expression interface in the family editor needs to be even more intuitive - in many large firms, there are people who are just family modelers creating "black boxes" for the designers to manipulate – The designers need to create thier own families – but in order for that to occur, Autodesk needs to make the parametric process easier – nothing stresses the designers more than to have on Friday deadline nights to face constraint errors of curtain wall panel families because the person who created them didn’t bother to test the parameters and left early that day(5pm to catch the BART back to Oakland) and the team was left in a lurch to use drafting lines over white filled regions to patch over the broken family member.
PARAMETRICISM is just a tool to compute our forms people!!!!
But it brings about one important aspect that was lost from architecture : MATHEMATICS.
one big advantage of using parametric software is: automation and less time cadding and more time dedicated to critical thinking... to which architecture is really about
Anyone go to the Schumacher lecture on wednesday @ columbia?
Did he have anything new to say?
schumacher is irrelevent, does not compute.
Parametricism is not the future.
I thought I would learn grasshopper to help me out with a nice little problem I have been working on for a few years now. I tinkered, but utlimately it didnt provide the results I wanted.
The lesson is that if everyone has the same tools, you get the same results. I am reminded of the William Blake who said "I must create my own system or be enslaved by another man's". So thats what I am doing now.
The mathematicians and IT geeks rule this world. And yet again, architects are scrambling around trying to apply methodologies and justifications to an external tool and struggling to find meaning. The trouble with numbers is that they are omniscient and meaningless.
The only use for parametricism [in the broadest sense] is where, as a tool, it allows a greater level of control to the architect for fabrication of buildings, in hand with architects actually having physical and financial ownership over the process.
Reminds me of this A.Aalto quote: he said he was excited & supportive of modular systems, as long as the size of the basic module doesn't exceed 1mm...
Rereading this thread, spaceman summed the whole thing quite concisely.
Parametricism = tool, not style.
Schumacher = really really excited about this.
---
Stuff that relies solely on parametric solutions do have a similar look - but it's more a kind of wistfull pattern making in an "organic" vein, rather than anything based on optimization, the organizing and managing of diverse objects and their attributes. So, as far as parametricism can be identified as architecture that "looks like something" - having a distinct style, the ideological grounds are twofold: simultaneously a reliance on mathematics and a bent towards the the forms of observable nature.
also, parametricism seems a piece of a something greater.
over the next fifty years, it may be that parametricism and evidence-based design and the increasing importance of building performance validation and the need to keep living models of buildings and a revolution in the way specs are kept and all data managed and the incorporation of graphical programming languages and the incorporation of realtime rendering and building performance tools such as ecotect and trelligence affinity all grow together to form a mature BIM technology --- and in hindsight, the vogue of "parametricism" will be a historical moment in time when this one aspect of design, the development of this one thread of the forthcoming mature BIM, stood out clearly and distinctly as its own focus area within the discipline and claims its own distinct theoretical lineage.
in summary, i think it is a piece in co-evolution with others, but not an end in itself (which is how it is often framed and referenced when most criticized).
do any of you actually practice architecture?
parameters, seems like a daily factor on every job, whether its Zoning, Building Code, Cost, and misc. other request.
A zoning study is a BIM parametric model, duh.
i know i know, we're talking about that fancy algorithmic shit...but utlimately the very fundamental principle of making design decisions is based on paremeter effecting your choice.
parametricism is as close to modernism this generation will ever get.
so get over it, Schumacher is excited about something applicable to the profession and not some trend like Deconstunisms, etc...
parametricism is inherent in practice, but there is a shift occurring.
as was explained to me on a related matter, we are kind of where personal computers and to some extent, software development was in the seventies. companies, individuals, lone geniuses all developed their methods and products in their own individual ways and standardization was inconsistent and localized, usually to individual firms or companies at best --- but changes in technology and (due to scale, complexity and rate of change) method led to standardization around certain technologies and protocols
once the concept of what the personal computer and its user experience should be and how they should function began to solidify through consensus, and once computer engineers and software developers began to buy into industry standards for form and function, once consumers and users knew what they were getting, it opened up the industry and led to a 30+ year boom in development during which not only did the industry grow but the quality and power of products improved at an exponential rate
building design is approaching a similar moment --- you are correct about parametricism being inherent in modernism already --- and there is actually a great article written by Gordon Pask (i believe in 1969) in AD magazine in which he basically said that the architectural design process is a systems design process already and so architects should play an increasing role in the way data is operationalized in the development and assessment of form and function --- industry conditions are leading to standardization around performance and modeling standards (and a broader acceptable that universal standards are valuable) so that data, information and models can be shared for collaborative and validation purposes
from such a perspective, "parametricism" is just one component and quickly becoming a historical one at that --- but many of the other necessary components are clearly co-evolving with it and soon they will coalesce
Good point jmagnelli, I always related trends in architecture back to other fields, it seems like we are always a few generations behind.
This is also why I have fully subscribed to Autodesk, even if they are not the best software now ultimately you will only have two choices Autodesk or Bentley
parametricism is only close to modernism if you play the post-parametrization game instead of actually using parametric tools as form generators. then you want to explore variance within specific constraints, and then chance comes into play, and you'll find you're far closer to the surrealists than to corb when that happens.
"instead of actually using parametric tools as form generators."
the means may not resonate with a modernist approach, but doesn't the intent to identify the underlying order and the faith in the solution b/c of the rigors of its method
but a good point nonetheless.
i think i was sloppy with my reference to pask.
i was wrong in relating pask's article to modernism --- his background in cybernetics and systems seems to place him outside of the shift from modern to post-modern and such a systems approach has elements of both which makes it an awkward fit in either
rather, he seems to participate in an alternative trajectory that never gained wide appeal, at least not at the time
[sorry in advance for the long rambling post]
one interesting thing about post-occupancy and performance analysis (it's usually only done by a small fraction of government agencies) is that they're discovering that before-cheap-oil structures often perform much better in both flexibility of use and energy consumption.
the big thing we all seem to fail to understand in these highly programmed/designed closed systems (modeled and tested in environmental analysis software + informational minutia via BIM; all done after we've developed some kind of conceptual "form") is that people still use these buildings and they often don't behave as we think they should - plus these buildings aren't adaptable to changes in how we use them over time, and they lack basic redundancy in their systems and layout in order to accommodate compartmentalization, contraction and/or expansion. we're not designing bridges which we'll always use the same way (until someone invents flying cars) - we design buildings where things change every decade or so...
.....
Islamic architecture is highly parametric, btw... not blobby sculptural forms where you apply parametric tools to generate your structural/material systems so it can actually be built, but self-similarity and algorithmic repetition of simple forms based on a few cultural/religious rules + limitations of materials that allow for changes in scale of use over time. the closest modern example of culturally-driven formal parameters is our zoning and building codes and building component standardization, but without the aesthetic and political limitations.
IMO, what ZHA and schumacher are doing is formal/gestural manipulation and applying parametric tools to facilitate construction - if he was really doing parametric/algorithmic design his stuff would look more like a continuation of the work of people like van eyck, hertzberger, and the metabolists - who viewed the creation of their set of rules as a catalyst for total design and future manipulation of their structures based on potential use. it seems more like he's laying out program the old-fashioned way and then "draping" a form over it.... if he were showing things like wall systems algorithmically derived to produce a certain set of acoustical properties within a new spec neighborhood generated from longest distances people could call out to each other - that worked from a whole range of scales and could continue on into infinity - then maybe I'd say ok - he's pushing parametric as a complete design methodology and potential "style," but the examples he gives do not show that (or maybe we haven't yet reached bramante's tempietto ala nurbs).
just to reiterate what I said before: a brick wall is parametric - it looks different than an amorphous metallic skin with parametrically generated panels, but they both use the same principle. the brick wall's algorithm is simpler, but it still has manipulated variables (coursing) and constants (brick module, extent of wall boundary). I think maybe the big leap over the past 10 years is the realization is that a brick wall is parametric.
I have a headache from reading all these posts.....I think all the above is proof as to why todays building (in general) suck. The imagination is perhaps grasping the technology du jour of the tool....but not of the design, the client, beauty, etc....
We are currently in the era of Post-Fordism, mass customization is needed more than ever. Only Parametricism can achieve that.
Btw phenomenology could use parametric design as a tool, so I don't see them as competing "theories". I don't know how or why parametric design would ever be considered a theory.. however, object oriented philosophy (which seems to be parametric designs older brother) and phenomenology could definitely duke it out. I think this is why parametric design is a tool, it can be implemented in so many ways to say so many different things.. that's like saying BIM is a theory.. doesn't make sense to me.
Ahhh yes, "Post-fordism"; mass customization, the usual bs buzzword used by ZHA and AADRL to justify shitty designs.
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