Parametricism: A new global style for architecture and urban design

Architectural Design

Volumn 79, Issue 4, 2009, Pages 14-23

  Schumacher, Patrik ^a  

^a Zaha Hadid Architects ^*  (United Kingdom)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

EID: 68349084472     PISSN: 00038504     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1002/ad.912     Document Type: Review

References (23)

1. ZHA and AADRL together form just one node within this fast-growing network.
2. Also, we should not forget that the desire for an architecture marked by a complex, fluid, nature-like continuity was clearly expressed before the new digital tools had entered the arena: see Zaha Hadid's work of the late 1980s and Eisenman/Lynn's folding projects of the early 1990s. (This point also indicates that we are confronted with a new style and not merely new techniques.) Since then we have witnessed a conceptual radicalisation and increased formal sophistication along the lines previously set out, leading to the emergence of a powerful new style.
3. The credit for coining this key slogan goes to Greg Lynn and Jeff Kipnis.
4. For a pertinent concept of elegance that is related to the visual resolution of complexity, see Patrik Schumacher, 'Arguing for Elegance', in Ali Rahim and Hina Jamelle, AD Elegance, Vol 77, No 1, Jan/Feb 2007.
5. This interpretation of styles is valid only with respect to the avant-garde phase of any style.
6. It is important to distinguish research programmes in the literal sense of institutional research plans from the meta-scientific conception of research programmes that has been introduced into the philosophy of science: whole new research traditions that are directed by a new fundamental theoretical framework. It is this latter concept that is utilised here to reinterpret the concept of style. See Imre Lakatos, The Methodology of Scientific Research Programmes, Cambridge University Press (Cambridge), 1978.
7. Parametricism involves a conceptual shift from part-to-whole relationships to component-system relationships, system-to-system relationships and system-subsystem relationships. Parametricism prefers open systems that always remain incomplete; that is, without establishing wholes. As the density of associations increases, so components may become associated in multiple systems. The correlation of initially independent systems implies the formation of a new encompassing system.
8. 'Parametric figuration' featured in teachings at the Yale School of Architecture, the University of Applied Arts in Vienna and in the author's studio at the AADRL.
9. 'Parametric responsiveness' was at the heart of our three-year design research agenda 'Responsive Environments' at the AADRL in London from 2001 to 2004.
10. 'Parametric Urbanism' is the title of our recently completed design research cycle at the AADRL, from 2005 to 2008.
11. Le Corbusier, The City of Tomorrow and its Planning, Dover Publications (New York), 1987, p 5.
12. Translated from the French original: Urbanisme, Paris, 1925.
13. Urbanisme, 1925.Ibid, p 8.
14. Urbanisme, 1925.Ibid, p 15.
15. Frei Otto might be considered as the sole true precursor of parametricism.
16. Le Corbusier, Urbanisme. op cit, p 18.
17. Frei Otto, Occupying and Connecting - Thoughts on Territories and Spheres of Influence with Particular Reference to Human Settlement, Edition Axel Menges (Stuttgart/London), 2009.
18. Frei Otto, Occupying and Connecting - Thoughts on Territories and Spheres of Influence with Particular Reference to Human Settlement, 2009.Ibid, p 45.
19. Within the AADRL research agenda of 'Parametric Urbanism' we too always started with material analogues that were then transposed into the domain of digitally simulated self-organisation.
20. Frei Otto, Occupying and Connecting - Thoughts on Territories and Spheres of Influence with Particular Reference to Human Settlement. op cit, p 64.
21. Marek Kolodziejczyk, 'Thread Model, Natural-Spontaneous Formation of Branches', in SFB 230, Natural Structures - Principles, Strategies, and Models in Architecture and Nature, Proceedings of the 2nd International Symposium of the Sonderforschungsbereich 230, Stuttgart, 1991, p 139.
22. This is what Zaha Hadid Architects imposed within the urban guidelines for the Singapore masterplan.
23. Zaha Hadid Architects, design team: Zaha Hadid, Patrik Schumacher, Saffet Bekiroglu, Daewa Kang, Daniel Widrig, Bozana Komljenovic, Sevil Yazici, Vigneswaran Ramaraju, Brian Dale, Jordan Darnell, Elif Erdine, Melike Altinisik, Ceyhun Baskin, Inanc Eray, Fluvio Wirz, Gonzalo Carbajo, Susanne Lettau, Amit Gupta, Marie-Perrine Placais, Jimena Araiza.