May 6 2010 will forever be remembered as the day that Patrik Schumacher's Parametric Manifesto of 2008 was popularized for the masses by the Architect's Journal.
May 6 2010 will forever be remembered as the day that Patrik Schumacher's Parametric Manifesto of 2008 was popularized for the masses by the Architect's Journal. The text begins like so: "In my Parametricist Manifesto of 2008, I first communicated that a new, profound style has been maturing within the avant-garde segment of architecture during the last 10 years." He soon tells us "The concept of style deserves to be defended." Ready for the style wars everyone? The winner can claim to be the global leader because "Architecture today is world architecture" and "Parametricism claims universal validity." I wasn't aware that employees at Zaha Hadid Architects were obligated to read the Manifesto and sign a blood oath of loyalty promising to defend the "hegemony" of "parametricism." Someone drank the vril. You should too. (via Michael Kubo and OU Grimley)
13 Comments
this is funny. actually I heard it here first, well, the gist of it
Gross.
wow, spam reaches new heights
this guy is aggressively shallow..
ugh...nauseating.
a conglomeration of fantasy words that mean absolutely nothing...
I really thought it was a prank.
I actually really enjoyed that and feel like there is much to be discussed.
This: Parametricism is able to deliver all the components for a high-performance contemporary life process. All moments of contemporary life become uniquely individuated within a continuous, ordered texture.
This is where "green" is heading, right? And using highly complex computer programs to figure out the optimal angle/location/opacity of a sunscreen doesn't mean you can't also figure out how deep a flat overhang should be to provide shade on the solstice by using Pythagorean geometry drawn in sand on the jobsite. Things are able to be more complex, but don't have to be needlessly so.
I also like defining it as a style - with the understanding that all styles can be employed both "honestly" and "decoratively", and that the word "style" itself is one that is used to try to categorize, perhaps incorrectly. Parametricism will happen regardless of how we categorize it.
One phrase in the comments truck me, however: that architects need to get over their fear of craftsmanship. This is where the project illustrating the article, IMO, fails (the Nordpark project). The caulk joints look sloppy, and the whole wavy spectacular form just sits clunkily on the very quotidian concrete bases. But I'm sure the cell-sized building bots will be able to solve that problem when we get them.
Defining it as a style isn't so much the problem as is the "Great New Style After Modernism" argument. He seems to get a bit confused: he asks us to redefine style as a process:
"For this purpose I have proposed that architectural styles are best understood as design-research programmes, conceived in analogy to the way paradigms frame scientific research programmes."
as opposed to "the tendency to regard style as merely a matter of appearance", suggesting a diversity of apearances might result ("This does not mean homogenisation and monotony"), but then asserts that "Parametricism aims for hegemony" (which is where the "scientific research programmes." analogy falls apart as well).
And finally he goes on to define Parametricism with a list of visual do's and don'ts.
For example, things can be built in a Colonial Style, and a Colonial style came about because carpenters followed certain rules about best-building practices with the materials at hand combined with the visual desires of the designer (Honest). Now things can be built to look Colonial style even though they don't follow any of the best practices of carpentry (Decorative).
So can't every different parametric practice evolve into a style (Honest), with an appearance that can then be stylized (Decorative) without actually using any of the tools of parametrics?
Perhaps I am thinking way above my pay grade, but his argument sounds suspiciously like an apologia for a very specific visual style wrapped in the guise of millennial inevitability.
This would, by the way, harken back to founding Modernism, except that Modernism was able to contain a number of different visual/material/compositional strategies within its larger cultural agenda.
He hints at, I think, that Parametricism, by virtue of the ability of the computers to assimilate, assess and provide quantitative analysis of site specific determinants, will result in every building “looking different”, thereby bypassing “homogenization”.
Does the use of Parametrcism then inevitably result in curved, sinuous forms as the most efficient/best solution to function and context determinants? Or does it allow for other visual/compositional results that have equal validity as Architectural solutions?
I think the answer is no. The current fetishization of scripted forms is just the use of the tool in its infancy, but some of the forms will take hold in ways that we love and want to repeat.
I also agree with your first sentence, that the "style" can be seen as having a certain inevitability - I think many users of the tools have blinders on as to how it can be used in functional ways that don't relate to appearance.
But trust me, aldorossi, I'm the one thinking way above my pay scale here - closest to parametrics I've ever been is free Sketchup! But I'm excited about the possibilities.
For me it comes down to clarifying the relationship between complex data analysis and how form is generated. Superficially, the forms resulting from parametric design seem to take on what would traditionally be considered a visual style, something that Shumacher explicity asks us to get beyond. Because he is asking us to consider Parametric Design as a paradigm shift equal to the magnitude of Modernism, we should remind ourselves that in its earliest manifestations Modern architecture was a visual style ahead of its ability to utilize the industrial technologies it was supposed to exploit. Perhaps in this way Parametric design does have a valid analogy to the Modern paradigm shift.
And if we extend that analogy, can we envision a Post-Parametricism? Giving away my age, I was an undergrad at the high flowering of the Neo-Classical stage of PoMo (and railed against it every chance I had). Our favorite professor called this period "Modern Architecture in Drag", because building technology hadn't changed, Architects had simply come up with ways to dress it differently. The new question becomes: Is complex available data only relevant and/or useful in generating a specific formal manifestation? Could we see one day (heaven forbid) a Post-Parametric Neo Classicism?
Other interesting questions:
Is there a point at which the "grain" or "resolution" of data becomes so detailed that contemporary building technology is not able to resolve itself around the data in a meaningful way?
Also, we would discover at some point, I think, that a great deal of relevant data input is ultimately fluid in nature. Do we "freeze" a moment in the data flow to resolve (at this point in building technology) our architectural solution? Does this impact the relevance of detailed data analysis with respect to architectural form?
The only reason why architecture has been trapped by styles and style makers is because the expectancy of architecture has never been achieved as a true manifestation of total creativity. Therefore, through its own fault of academic and association restrictions and group followers the profession inherently discourages and prevents individual building creativity which it now finds itself completely void of and could never recover from. Its irrelevancy must now defer to an outside force of true creative building content.
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