Between Mission Statement and Parametric Model

Parametric model created with Catia software: Helios House. All images courtesy of Office dA.

A crisis in architectural education is brewing. I refer to the increasingly contentious divide between that

cadre of junior faculty who espouse the gee-whiz form-making made possible by speculative parametric

modeling and an Inconvenient Truth-influenced student body demanding design studios that prioritize social

relevance and environmental stewardship. [1] The inherent tension between these cultural positions has not

yet been fully registered by design faculties nor acted upon with specific curricular reform — yet it’s hard to

miss. 

On the one hand, the situation is generating strange, hybridized manifestations in design studios — notably

the ubiquitous son-of-the-Yokohama Port Terminal proposal: an undulating green roofscape blanketing

habitable space below. [2] On the other hand, many schools and departments are busy reforming their

programs to better integrate sustainability criteria into studio exercises, often at the expense of other

aspects of design thinking. But in this swing from decontextualized digital experimentation to heightened

social responsibility, design education is being compromised. A generation of young architects is graduating

into professional practice with scant ability to construe and elaborate an architectural agenda that begins

with a set of a priori social and cultural intentions and ends with a constructed environment. Only by

examining both the causes of this situation and current pedagogical tendencies can a better approach to

design education emerge. 

As William Menking editorialized in the May 20, 2009 edition of The Architect’s Newspaper, the focus on the

formal possibilities of computer modeling is now ubiquitous in design schools. “The obsession with which

many young faculty and their students now pursue digital research to the exclusion of all contextual and

real-world issues (materiality, for example) is astonishing,” he says. “In some schools, the end-of-the-year

exhibits feature project after project resembling nothing so much as extruded dinosaur vertebrae, often

hung from the ceiling or set on a barren plinth, appearing as isolated — and irrelevant — as objects in a

natural history museum.” As an expert witness of the influence of parametric modeling on certain East Coast

architecture programs, I can confirm the truth of this observation. [3] 

Since the late 1990s the generative capabilities of parametric modeling, or digital scripting, programs have

come to dominate design discourse at schools like Yale, Harvard, Princeton and Columbia, largely due to the

increasing influence and leadership of mid-career professors and practitioners such as Greg Lynn, Preston

Scott Cohen and Monica Ponce de Leon. This focus is being reinforced by the newest generation of assistant

professors, who themselves learned design through the lens of scripting logics and who find methodologies

for form-making mostly within the rationales of computer programming. [4] Despite the productive example

of some practitioners — notably Office dA, the firm of Ponce de Leon and Nader Tehrani — it’s too often the

case that the process of creating forms by inputting and manipulating data does not require that the

designer develop a nuanced and comprehensive design strategy; and the process itself can produce a

spurious and easy complexity that masks the absence of that more expansive approach. In some projects,

for instance, specific cultural, social and physical contexts are deployed mainly as tactics for autonomous

form making. In others the project brief itself — the client’s list of programs, project areas, functional

adjacencies and so on — becomes the primary impetus for generating form; the Seattle Public Library, by

Rem Koolhaas and OMA, is only the most notable and didactic example of this self-referential strategy. 

At the opposite end of the ideological spectrum are those comprehensive studios that eschew formal

experimentation (usually out of a kind of disciplinary guilt, or fear of fashion) and instead favor a metric-

based emphasis on social and/or ecological relevance. Part of this phenomenon (and the attendant guilt) can

be attributed to broader disciplinary hand-wringing about the architect’s proper cultural role in the

international debate on global warming. Recently, for example, the American Institute of Architects has

added “sustainable design” to the list of required topics for its continuing education credits, with a specific

emphasis on the energy consumption of buildings. Reporter Robin Pogrebin noted this in a New York

Times article of August 20, 2009, quoting from the AIA website: “The issue of climate change and the impact

of buildings on carbon emissions [are creating] new expectation among clients and the public to look to the

expertise of architects for solutions that can help them leave a greener footprint.” As a result architects are

being challenged to become familiar with the kinds of building design metrics that have traditionally been

the purview of sub-consultants such as lighting designers and mechanical and electrical engineers. 

What makes the contradictions especially complicated is that both tendencies often operate at the same

time in the same place. Certainly this schizophrenia was on display at this year’s spring thesis reviews at

Harvard’s Graduate School of Design, where both agendas were often combined in a single project. In most

cases, the sustainability agenda was framed in a slickly produced slide presentation, the product of a

research-based course in thesis preparation. The presentations were well researched and the narratives

galloped along at a pace and with a conviction that would have made Al Gore proud. Yet too often the mix of

earnest advocacy and formal ambition resulted in strange misadventures of execution. This was the case in

a proposal for a hybrid urban farm/high-rise condominium adjacent to the newly opened High Line in

Manhattan’s Meatpacking District. The project pitch consisted of a compelling narrative of global food

shortages and the high costs of food distribution; sophisticated information graphics were used to argue for

the benefits of vertical farming. As in professional projects by the Copenhagen-based BIG or the Rotterdam-

based MVRDV, the build-up of data points and facts was meant to give the still-undisclosed proposal the

authority of retroactive inevitability. Perhaps it was not surprising that after a 20-minute lecture that might

have served to launch a mission-driven NGO, the architectural proposal itself was implausible — whether

considered technically, socially or environmentally. The reason? Early in the design process the student had

been waylaid by a computer-generated formal strategy based on lifting and rotating the floor plates in order

to twist the building away from the street grid to an orientation partly rationalized by solar angles. The idea

didn’t really work, yet the design was force-marched by a scripting program that turned the project into a

twisting taffy of form.

One of the least sensible consequences of the proposal was the gigantic air-conditioned atrium that was

necessary to post-justify the deep floor plates — and the sheer volume of the building that resulted — of the

outside-in-conceived form. The project also didn’t much consider the crews of low-wage farm workers that

would be needed to plant and harvest the crops of the ambitious vertical farm; presumably these crews

would share elevators and stairwells with the residents of the market-rate condos above. Clearly this was not

a version of the earnest community garden that has cropped up in so many smaller-scale student projects,

but an enormous collective farm, presented with perspective renderings that had more than a whiff of soviet-

style social realism. Was that an upscale retiree keeping busy in his active-leisure development by picking

strawberries? Or a migrant farmer who had taken the No. 1 train down from the Bronx?

The contradictions of contemporary education were also evident this spring at the Yale School of

Architecture. Known for the diversity of its studio options since the 1980s, when James Stirling, Aldo Rossi

and Robert Venturi all taught there, Yale has become yet more pluralistic under the deanship of Robert

Stern, with a dizzying range of approaches to practice and theory. Visiting professor Demetri Porphyios

asked his students to design a luxury spa in Morocco by starting with an analysis of classical Roman and

Mediterranean public baths. Another visiting professor, William Sharples, of SHoP, had his studio design a

spaceport for commercial space travel. The studio led by Liza Fior and Katherine Clarke, from Muf, in London,

focused on the future reuse of the London 2012 Olympics site; that of faculty member Keith Krumweide

designed sustainable multifamily housing in Houston. And Greg Lynn, progenitor of “blob architecture,” and

also visiting at Yale last spring, was back to test the limits of advanced digital modeling, this time with a

studio problem for the “missing” third arm of Bernini’s arcade at the Piazza San Pietro in Rome. Given this

constellation of critics, it’s not surprising that some students used parametric modeling to create sexy,

shapely designs — again, fantastic roof structures or elaborate topographies were much in evidence — while

others deployed more rearguard (read: orthogonal) design languages that no doubt owe to the ongoing

influence of Dutch design (by way of Mies and Le Corbusier) and Spanish architecture (by way of Louis Kahn

and Giuseppe Terragni). [5]

Questions about the cultural relevance and political correctness of complicated forms enabled by digital

modeling have become especially pointed lately, as recession has taken hold. In a review published in

October 2008, the New York Times critic Nicolai Ouroussoff sharply criticized Zaha Hadid’s temporary

pavilion for Chanel in Central Park, more for political than formal reasons. Ouroussoff questioned the wisdom

of constructing, as the economy was crashing, a molded fiberglass folly intended to celebrate luxury couture

within the proudly democratic spaces of Central Park. Yet dissatisfaction with formal fetishization was being

voiced even before the crash. An important manifestation of a growing campaign to promote public-interest

design in the academy is Structures for Inclusion, a nationwide series of symposia started in 2000 by the

non-profit Design Corps. I caught up with SFI when it made a stop at Harvard in spring 2008. Participants

included Public Architecture, a non-profit design collective based in San Francisco; Teddy Cruz, a San Diego

architect and leading standard-bearer for social responsibility; and the Japanese architect Shigeru Ban,

renowned for cardboard-tube columns used in the construction of refugee shelter. Now in its ninth year —

this year’s conference was held in Dallas — SFI is raising necessary questions about the need for more

socially relevant models of design practice; through its viral influence, it has been the single most influential

catalyst for the soft student activism now influencing curricula across the country. 

Yet just as unsatisfying as unbridled formal experimentation is an overemphasis on research-based

outcomes that can reduce design to an easy illustration of good intentions, and in the process neglect the

equally meaningful goals of creating pleasurable and compelling physical environments. A case in point was

suggested by a public lecture this past spring at Yale by Cameron Sinclair, cofounder and chief spokesperson

of Architecture for Humanity. Sinclair will need little introduction to Places’ readers. In the past few years

he’s become ubiquitous on the conference circuit — one of those figures whose name practically self-

populates the field for “socially responsible practitioner.” That night in New Haven, Sinclair gave a version of

his pitch for humanitarian design. Yet he never substantiated the talking points with any well-worked-out

disciplinary agenda or even with much information about the actual projects and their presumably

measurable impacts. The young faculty and students who crowded the hall wanting to hear the details about

how architecture can work to catalyze social improvement heard instead about the exponential expansion of

AFH’s globe-trotting organization, with its Amway-like network of franchises. Sinclair’s presentation left me,

and many of the students I talked with afterward, unsatisfied, convinced that admirable intentions in

themselves aren’t enough to rescue architectural discourse and progressive practice from the increasingly

empty gestures of parametric modeling.

So where are we? What do we need to do to synthesize the powerful formal possibilities of parametric

modeling with the need to realign disciplinary priorities? This is a large question, which I’ll explore in future

articles. For now I’ll suggest that one approach is to better understand the complexities and pressures of

mainstream practice. How do existing professional power structures, working with real clients and regulatory

frameworks, encourage certain kinds of design production and inhibit others? Why does the DNA of almost

every office building in North America — maybe the world — consist of the same center-core diagram with

the same ungainly and clumsily dimensioned floor plan, no matter how sophisticated the skin? Why are the

majority of new public school buildings soulless and isolated object-buildings surrounded by acres of parking

lots and sports fields? Why do super-sized arterial roads, and the retail big boxes that line them, continue to

be developed when the landscapes that result are so banal, and widely reviled as such? My hunch is that if

design pedagogy began to engage these everyday conditions, whether in the market-driven economy or

through the mechanism of public funding (or a combination of the two), then a new design-focused

pedagogy would emerge, one that would gain intellectual weight through the relevance of the problems.

Such a context might inspire designers to use sophisticated professional tools — including parametric

modeling — to produce truly new and meaningful paradigms.

Notes

1. Parametric modeling is a design technique that uses smart, three-dimensional modeling software to help guide and track the

design of complex projects. Modeling software — such as Catia, Revit, ArchiCad and Digital Project — is eclipsing conventional CAD

software in most commercial architecture firms, largely due to its ability to manage and coordinate information throughout design

and construction. In design studios, parametric modeling is used to create patterns, spaces and forms through the input of specific

criteria and operational parameters. The resulting contours of patterns, spaces and forms are not designed by the gesture of a hand

on paper, but rather controlled indirectly by the design of software that controls inputted information. 

The emerging ideological divide I refer to is reminiscent of the division between back-to-nature environmentalists and postmodern

formalists in the late 1970s and early ’80s. With a crucial difference: Postmodern formalism was a reaction to what were perceived

to be deterministic design methodologies focused on social or environmental science. Today the situation is reversed: Both

sustainable design and mission-driven design practices are reactions to the perceived formal autonomy of projects designed with

the aid of parametric modeling. We may be seeing the conclusion of an historical arc that began in the early ’70s and that has been

bracketed by global energy crises. 

2. The Yokohama Port Terminal, designed by Foreign Office Architects, was completed in 2002. 

3. I taught in the architecture department of Harvard’s Graduate School of Design from 1997 until 2003, when I accepted a position

at Northeastern University in Boston. Since then I have been a regular guest critic at MIT, Yale and Columbia, in addition to the GSD.

In spring 2009 I taught a studio at Yale as visiting associate professor.

4. Some background: early on, two approaches to parametric modeling were especially influential. One approach, centered in the

studios at Columbia, mixed a tendency to the metaphorical filtered through quasi-scientific analyses: for instance, the movement

patterns of flocks of birds, schools of fish, and the like might be mapped as inspiration for complex forms. A second approach,

initiated by Monica Ponce de Leon and Nader Tehrani at the Harvard GSD, focused on the complex repetitions of cladding patterns.

Ponce de Leon and Tehrani’s interest in the full capabilities of parametric modeling, from form generation through fabrication,

profoundly influenced the trajectory of their firm, Office dA, and more recently it has influenced the reform of MIT’s foundation

design program under Tehrani’s leadership. Through their work and teaching, and in collaboration with students and colleagues,

Ponce de Leon and Tehrani discovered a strategic platform that allowed them to test and maximize the performative aspects of

their architectural designs. Even an early work such as Casa La Roc (1995), which forecasts the formal obsessions enabled by future

software advances, explores the changing function as much as the elegant pattern of the house’s masonry walls.

5. One benefit of Stern’s inclusive approach is to reduce the likelihood that there will develop a small number of competing factions,

thus empowering students to make highly personal decisions about their priorities and preoccupations. Which raises a real and

somewhat ironic possibility: that what might be described as the radically ecumenical approach of Stern the educator — as distinct

from Stern the traditionalist practitioner — might encourage meaningful approaches as students negotiate the divides between

dominant ideologies.

Parametricism  -  A New Global Style for Architecture and Urban Design Patrik Schumacher, London 2008Published in: AD Architectural Design - Digital Cities, Vol 79, No 4, July/August 2009, guest editor: Neil Leach, general editor: Helen Castle

Abstract: Though parametricism has its roots in the digital animation techniques of the mid-1990s, it has only fully emerged in recent years with the development of advanced parametric design systems. Parametricism has become the dominant, single style for avant-garde practice today. It is particularly suited to large-scale urbanism as exemplified by a series of competition-winning master-plans by Zaha Hadid Architects.

There is a global convergence in recent avant-garde architecture that justifies the enunciation of a new style: Parametricism. The style is rooted in digital animation techniques. Its latest refinements are based on advanced parametric design systems and scripting techniques. This style has been developed over the last 15 years and is now claiming hegemony within avant-garde architecture. It succeeds modernism as a new long wave of systematic innovation. The style finally closes the transitional period of uncertainty that was engendered by the crisis of modernism and that was marked by a series of short lived episodes including Postmodernism, Deconstructivism, and Minimalism. Parametricism is the great new style after modernism. The new style claims relevance on all scales from architecture and interior design to large scale urban design. The larger the scale of the project the more pronounced is parametricism’s superior capacity to articulate programmatic complexity. The urbanist potential of parametricism has been explored in a three year research agenda at the AADRL  - Parametric Urbanism– and demonstrated by a series of competition winning masterplans by Zaha Hadid Architects.

 

Zaha Hadid Archiects, Kartal-Pendik Masterplan, Istanbul, Turkey, 2006Fabric study. The urban fabric comprises both cross towers and perimeter blocks. The image shows the morphological range of the perimeter block type. Blocks are split into four quadrants allowing for a secondary, pedestrian path system. At certain network crossing points the block system is assimilated to the tower system: each block sponsors one of the quadrants to form a pseudo tower around a network crossing point.

 

   

One North Masterplan, Network – Fabric – Buildings, Singapore, Zaha Hadid Architects 2001-2003Fabric and network. This masterplan for a new mixed-used urban business district in Singapore was the first of a series of radical masterplans that led to the concept of parametric urbanism and then to the general concept of parametricism.

 

I. Parametricism as Style

Avant-garde architecture and urbanism are going through a cycle of innovative adaptation – retooling and adapting the discipline to the demands of the socio-economic era of post-fordism. The mass society that was characterized by a universal consumption standard has evolved into the heterogenous society of the multitude, marked by a proliferating life-style and career differentiation. Architecture and urbanism are called upon to organize and articulate the increased complexity of post-fordist society.

Contemporary avant-garde architecture and urbanism is addressing this societal demand via a rich panoply of parametric design techniques. However, we are confronted with a new style rather than just with a new set of techniques. The techniques in questions – the employment of animation, simulation and form-finding tools, as well as parametric modelling and scripting  -  have inspired a new collective movement with radically new ambitions and values. This has lead to many new, systematically connected design problems that are being worked on competitively within a global network of design researchers.1  Over and above aesthetic recognisability, it is this wide-spread, long-term consistency of shared design ambitions/problems that justifies the enunciation of a style in the sense of an epochal phenomenon.2 We propose to call this style: Parametricism.Parametricism is a mature style. There has been talk about “continuous differentiation”3, versioning, iteration and mass customization etc. for quite a while within the architectural avant-garde discourse. Recently we witnessed an accelerated, cumulative build up of virtuosity, resolution and refinement, facilitated by the attendant development of parametric design tools and scripts that allow the precise formulation and execution of intricate correlations between elements and subsystems. The shared concepts, computational techniques, formal repertoires, and tectonic logics that characterize this work are crystallizing into a solid new hegemonic paradigm for architecture.Parametricism emerges from the creative exploitation of parametric design systems in view of articulating increasingly complex social processes and institutions. The parametric design tools themselves cannot account for this profound shift in style from modernism to parametricism. This is evidenced by the fact that late modernist architects are employing parametric tools in ways which result in the maintenance of a modernist aesthetics, i.e. using parametric modelling to inconspicuously absorb complexity. The parametricist sensibility pushes in the opposite direction and aims for a maximal emphasis on conspicuous differentiation and the visual amplification differentiating logics. Aesthetically it is the elegance4of ordered complexity and the sense of seamless fluidity, akin to natural systems, that is the hallmark of parametricism.

 

II. Styles as Design Research Programmes

Avant-garde styles might be interpreted and evaluated in analogy to new scientific paradigms, affording a new conceptual framework, and formulating new aims, methods and values. Thus a new direction for concerted research work is established.5 My thesis is therefore: Styles are design research programmes.6Innovation in architecture proceeds via the progression of styles so understood. This implies the alternation between periods of cumulative advancement within a style and revolutionary periods of transition between styles. Styles represent cycles of innovation, gathering the design research efforts into a collective endeavor. Stable self-identity is here as much a necessary precondition of evolution as it is in the case of organic life. To hold on to the new principles in the face of difficulties is crucial for the chance of eventual success. This is incompatible with an understanding of styles as transient fashions. Basic principles and methodologies need to be preserved and defended with tenacity in the face of initial difficulties and setbacks. Each style has its hard core of principles and a characteristic way of tackling design problems/tasks.

The programme/style consists of methodological rules: some tell us what paths of research to avoid (negative heuristics), and others what paths to pursue (positive heuristics). The negative heuristics formulates strictures that prevent the relapse into old patterns that are not fully consistent with the core, and the positive heuristics offers guiding principles and preferred techniques that allow the work to fast-forward in one direction.

III. Defining Heuristics and Pertinent Agendas

The defining heuristics of parametricism are fully reflected in the taboos and dogmas of contemporary avant-gared design culture:

Negative heuristics (taboos): avoid rigid geometric primitives like squares, triangles and circles, avoid simple repetition of elements, avoid juxtaposition of unrelated elements or systems.

Positive heuristics (dogmas): consider all forms to be parametrically malleable, differentiate gradually (at variant rates), inflect and correlate systematically.

 

The current stage of advancement within parametricism relates as much to the continuous advancement of the attendant computational design processes as it is due to the designer’s realization of the unique formal and organizational opportunities that are afforded by these processes. Parametricism can only exist via the continuous advancement and sophisticated appropriation of computational geometry. Finally, computationally advanced design techniques like scripting (in Mel-script or Rhino-script) and parametric modeling (with tools like GC or DP) are becoming a pervasive reality. Today it is impossible to compete within the contemporary avant-garde scene without mastering and advancing these techniques. However, the advancement of techniques should go hand in hand with the formulation of further ambitions and agendas. The following 5 agendas are to inject new aspects into the parametric paradigm and to push parametricism further:

1.Parametric Inter-articulation of Sub-systems: The ambition is to move from single system differentiation – e.g. a swarm of façade components - to the scripted association of multiple subsystems – envelope, structure, internal subdivision, navigation void. The differentiation in any one systems is correlated with differentions in the other systems.6.

2.Parametric Accentuation: The ambition is to enhance the overall sense of organic integration through correlations that favour deviation amplification rather than compensatory adaptations. The associated system should accentuate the initial differentiation. Thus a far richer articulation can be achieved and more orienting visual information can be made available.

3.Parametric Figuration7: We propose that complex configurations that are latent with multiple readings can be constructed as a parametric model with extremely figuration-sensitive variables. Parametric variations trigger

“gestalt-catastrophes”, i.e. the quantitative modification of these parameters trigger qualitative shifts in the perceived configuration. Beyond object parameters, ambient parameters and observer parameters have to be integrated into the parametric system.

4.Parametric Responsiveness8: Urban and architectural environments receive an inbuilt kinetic capacity that allows those environments to reconfigure and adapt themselves in response to prevalent occupation patterns. The real time registration of use-patterns drives the real time kinetic adaptation. The built environment thus acquires responsive agency at different time scales.

5.Parametric Urbanism9 - Deep Relationality:The assumption is that the urban massing describes a swarm-formation of many buildings whereby lawful continuities cohere this manifold of buildings. The systematic modulation of morphologies produces powerful urban effects and facilitates field orientation. Our ambition is deep relationality, i.e. to integrate the building morphology - all the way to the detailed tectonic articulation and the interior organisation. Parametric Urbanism might involve parametric accentuation, parametric figuration, and parametric responsiveness as registers to fulfill its ambition of deep relationality.

 

IV. Parametricist vs. Modernist Urbanism

Le Corbusier’s first theoretical statement on Urbanism starts with a eulogy of the straight line and the right angle as means by which man conquers nature. The first two paragraphs of The City of Tomorrow contrast man’s way with the pack-donkey’s way: “Man walks in a straight line because he has a goal and knows where he is going; he has made up his mind to reach some particular place and he goes straight to it. The pack-donkey meanders along, meditates a little in his scatter-brained and distracted fashion, he zig-zags in order to avoid larger stones, or to ease the climb, or to gain a little shade; he takes the line of least resistance.”10 Le Corbusier admires the urban order of the Romans and rejects our sentimental attachment to the picturesque irregularity of the medieval cities: “The curve is ruinous, difficult and dangerous; it is a paralyzing thing.”11 Le Corbusier insists that “the house, the street, the town … should be ordered; … if they are not ordered, they oppose themselves to us.”12  Le Corbusier’s limitation is not his insistence upon order but his limited concept of order in terms of classical geometry. Complexity theory in general, and the research of Frei Otto13 in particular, have since taught us to recognize, measure and simulate the complex patterns that emerge from processes of self-organisation. Phenomena like the “donkey’s path” and the urban patterns resulting from unplanned settlement processes can now be analyzed and appreciated in terms of their underlying logic and rationality, i.e. in terms of their hidden regularity and related performative power.Le Corbusier realized that although “nature presents itself to us as a chaos … the spirit which animates Nature is a spirit of order ”14. However, his understanding of nature’s order was limited by the science of his day. Today we can reveal the complex order of those apparently chaotic patterns by means of simulating their lawful “material computation”. Our parametricist sensibility gives more credit to the “pack-donkey’s path” as a form of

recursive material computation than to the simplicity of clear geometries that can be imposed in one sweeping move.

Frei Otto’s pioneering work on natural structures included work on settlement patterns. He starts with the distinction/relation of occupying andconnecting as the two fundamental processes that are involved in all processes of urbanisation.15 His analysis of existing patterns was paralleled by analogue experiments modelling crucial features of the settlement process. He distinguished distancing and attractive occupations. For distancing occupation he used magnets floating in water and for attractive occupation he used floating polystyrene chips. A more complex model integrates both distancing and attractive occupation whereby the polystyrene chips cluster around the floating magnetic needles that maintain distance among themselves16. The result closely resembles the typical settlement patterns found in our real urban landscapes.17

Frei Otto, Occupation with simultaneous distancing and attracting forces, Institute for Lightweight Structures (ILEK), Stuttgart, Germany, 1992Analogue models for the material computation of structural building forms (form-finding) are the hallmark of Frei Otto’s research institute. The same methodology has been applied to his urban simulation work. The model shown integrates both distancing and attractive occupations by using polystyrene chips that cluster around the floating magnetic needles that maintain distance among themselves.

 

With respect to processes of connection Frei Otto empirically distinguishes three scalar levels of path networks – each with its own typical configuration: settlement path networks, territory path networks, and long-distance path networks. All start as forking systems that eventually close into continuous networks. Frei Otto distinguishes three fundamental types of configuration: direct path networks, minimal path networks and minimizing detour networks. Again he conceives material analogues that are able to self-organise into relatively optimized solutions. For minimal path networks Frei Otto devised the soap bubble skin apparatus where a glass plate is held over a water surface and the minimal path system forms itself from needles.18 For the optimized detour networks the famous wool-thread models19 are able to compute a network solution between given points that optimize the relationship of total network length and the average detour factor

imposed. For each set of points, and for each adopted sur-length over the theoretical direct path, an optimizing solution is produced. Although no unique optimal solution exists, and each computation is different, characteristic patterns emerge in different regions of the parametric space.

Frei Otto, Apparatus for computing minimal path systems, Institute for Lightweight Structures (ILEK), Stuttgart, 1988The analogue model finds the minimal path system, that is, the system connects a distributed set of given points, thus the overall length of the path system is minimised. Each point is reached but there is a considerable imposition of detours between some pairs of points. The system is a tree (branching system) without any redundant connections.

 

Marek Kolodziejczyk, Wool-thread model to compute optimised detour path networks, Institute for Lightweight Structures (ILEK), Stuttgart, 1991Depending on the adjustable parameter of the thread’s sur-length, the apparatus – through the fusion of threads – computes a solution that significantly reduces the overall length of the path system while maintaining a low average detour factor.

 

Frei Otto’s form-finding models bring a large number of components into a simultaneous organising force-field. Any variation of the parametric profile of any of the elements is being lawfully responded to by all other elements within the system. Such quantitative adaptations often cross tresholds into emergent qualities.If such an associative sensitivity holds sway within a system we can talk about relational fields. Relational fields comprise mutually correlated sub-layers, for instance the correlation of patterns of occupation with patterns of connection. The growth-process of unplanned settlement patterns does indeed continuously oscillate between moments when points of occupation spawn paths and paths in turn attract occupation. The continuous differentiation of the path-network - linear stretches, forks, crossing points –  lawfully correlates with the continuous differentiation of the occupying fabric in terms of its density, programmatic type and morphology. The organising/articulating capacity of such relational fields is striking, e.g. in comparison with the grid of the American city. This modern grid is undifferentiated and therefore non-adaptive. Its “freedom” is now limiting: It leads to arbitrary juxtapositions that result in visual chaos.Modernism was founded on the concept of universal space. Parametricism differentiates fields. Space is empty. Fields are full, as if filled with a fluid medium. We might think of liquids in motion, structured by radiating waves, laminal flows, and spiraling eddies. Swarms have also served as paradigmatic analogues for the field-concept: swarms of buildings that drift across the landscape. There are no platonic, discrete figures or zones with sharp outlines. Within fields only regional field qualities matter: biases, drifts, gradients, and perhaps conspicuous singularities like radiating centres. Deformation does no longer spell the breakdown of order but the lawful inscription of information. Orientation in a complex, lawfully differentiated field affords navigation along vectors of transformation .The contemporary condition of arriving in a metropolis for the first time, without prior hotel arrangements, without a map, might instigate this kind of field-navigation. Imagine there are no more landmarks to hold on, no axis to follow and no more boundaries to cross.Parametricist urbanism aims to construct new field logics that operate via the mutually accentuating correlation of multiple urban systems: fabric modulation, street systems, system of open spaces etc. The agenda of deep relationality implies that the fabric modulation also extends to the tectonic articulation. Both massing and fenestration might   - each in its own way – be driven by sunlight orientation, producing a mutual enhancement of the visual orienting effect. Thus local perceptions (of the facade) can give clues about the relative position within the global system of the urban massing. The location and articulation of building entrances might be correlated with the differentiated urban navigation system20. This correlation might even extend to the internal circulation. This concept of deep relationality might also operate in reverse so that e.g. the internal organisation of a major institutional building might lead to multiple entrances that in turn trigger adaptations within the urban navigation system. It is important that such laws of correlation are adhered to across sufficiently large stretches.

 

V. Implementing Parametricist Urbanism

The urban implementation of parametricism is still in its infancy. However, ZHA was able to win a series of international masterplanning competitions with schemes that embody the key features of parametricism. The projects include the 200 hectar One-North Masterplan for a

mixed-use business park in Singapore, Soho City in Beijing comprising 2.5 million squaremeter of residential and retail programme, the mixed use masterplan for Bilbao including the river island and both opposing embankments, and the Kartal-Pendik masterplan21, a mixed use urban field of 55 hectar with 6 million squaremeter of gross buildable area comprising all programmatic components of a city.

The project is to constitute a sub-center on Istanbul’s Asian side to release the pressure on the historic centre. The site is being reclaimed from industrial estates and is flanked with the small grain fabric of sub-urban towns. The parametricist taboo of unmediated juxtapositions implied that we took the adjacent context  - in particular the incoming lines of circulation - as an important input for the generation of the urban geometry. Maya’s hair dynamic tool achieved a parametrically tuned bundling of the incoming paths into larger roads enclosing larger sites. The resultant lateral path system that exhibits the basic properties of Frei Otto’s minimizing detour network. The longitudinal direction was imposed via a primary artery with a series of subsidiary roads running in parallel. The result was is a hybrid between minimizing detour network and deformed grid. In parallel we worked with two primary fabric typologies, towers and perimeter blocks, each conceived as generative component or geno-type that allows for wide range of pheno-typical variation. The towers, conceived as cross towers, placed on the crossing points accentuating the path network. The perimeter block inversely correlates height with parcel area so that courtyards morph into internal atria as sites get smaller and blocks get taller. Blocks split along the lines of the secondary path-network. This move, together with the accentuating height differentiation, allows the block type to be assimilated to the cross-tower type. “pseudo-towers” are formed at some crossing points by pulling up the four corners of the four blocks that meet at such a corner. Thus an overall sense of continuity is being achieved in spite of starting with two rather distinct urban typologies. In terms of the global height regulation – besides the local dependency of height upon parcel size – we are trying to correlate the conspicuous build up of height with the lateral width of the overall field. Thus the rhythm of urban peaks indexes the rhythm of widening and narrowing of the urban stretch.

Zaha Hadid Archiects, Kartal-Pendik Masterplan, Istanbul, Turkey, 2006Masterplan: Hybrid detour net & deformed grid, Final Urban lay-out of streets and urban fabric     

 

Fabric studies 2: split block variations

Scripting calligraphy block patterns. Various scripts were developed that configure the perimeter blocks depending on parcel size, proportion and orientation. The script also allowed for random variations regarding the introduction of openings within blocks.

New cityscape. The Kartal-Penkik plan incorporates a vast quarry that becomes the largest item in a system of parks that are spread throughout the urban field. The rhythmic flow of the urban fabric gives a sense of organic cohesion.

 

The result is an elegant, coherently differentiated city-scape that facilitates navigation through its lawful constitution and through the architectural accentuation of both global and local field properties.This much might be possible to institute with the imposition of strict planning guidelines using building lines and height regulation. Political and private buy-in is required. All constituencies need to be convinced that the individual restrictions placed upon all sites really deliver a worth-while collective value: the unique character and coherent order of the urban field that all players benefit from if adherence can be enforced. Ordered complexity here replaces the monotony of older planned developments and the disorienting visual chaos that marks virtually all unregulated contemporary city expansions.To go further yet, in terms of our concept of deep relationality, we have to extend our involvement from urbanism to architecture. Only then we can further intensify the accentuating correlations, involving the systematic modulation of tectonic features. For instance, in terms of thecalligraphy blocks  - a third perimeter block variation that has been designed to both open up the interior of parcels and to cross parcels – we use a continuous facade differentiation that leads from the street-side to the courtyard on the basis of an initial distinction of external and internal facades. Another moment of deep articulation is the coordination of landscape and public spaces,

and the correlation of the secondary path-system with the disposition of internal navigation systems.

Calligraphy blocks – tectonic detail. The articulation of the facades is a function of the location within the urban field. The exterior of the blocks is given a heavier relief than the interior. Where a block opens up and the public space flows into the private courtyard, a semi-private zone is articulated via the gradient transformation between the outer and inner articulation.

Close-up of cross towers. The cross towers produce the urban peaks. Through their ground-level articulation these tower complexes participate in the creation of a continuous urban fabric that frames the streets and occasionally widens the street space into semi-public plazas. This is achieved while maintaining total continuity between the podium-like ground fabric and the shafts of the towers.

 

Doubts might be felt when confronted with the possibility of designing an urban field of up to 6 million squaremeter gross area with a single design team. Are we overstretching our capacity here? The more we are confronted with large scale development of this kind the more confident we grow that the tools and strategies we are deploying under the banner of parametricism can indeed deliver something that produces a decisive surplus value if compared with the usual alternative of uncoordinated, arbitrary juxtapositions. The contemporary choice of typologies, construction options and styles is simply too large to expect the underlying pragmatic logics to become legible. The result is a cacophony of pure difference. Parametricism is able to further coordinate pragmatic concerns and articulate them with all their rich differentiations and relevant

associations. The danger of overriding real-life richness is minimized because variety and adaptiveness are written into the very genetic make-up of parametricism.

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: Zaha Hadid’s work of the late eighties and Eisenman/Lynn’s folding projects of the early nineties. (This point also indicates that we are confronted with a new style and not only new techniques.) Since then we witnessed a conceptual radicalisation and increased formal sophistication along the lines set out then, 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, Aguing for Elegance, in: Castle, H., Rahim, A. & Jamelle, H., (eds), Elegance, Architectural Design, January/February 2007, Vol.77, No.1, Wiley – Academy, London

5 This interpretation of styles is valid only with respect to the avant-garde phase of any style.

6 It is important to distinguish between 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 utilized here for the reinterpretation of the concept of style. See: Imre Lakatos,The Methodology of Scientific Research Programmes, Cambridge 1978

7 Parametricism involves the 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. As the density of associations increases components might be associated into multiple systems. The correlation of initially independent system implies the formation of a new encompassing system etc.

8 “Parametric Figuration” featured in our teachings at Yale and at the University of Applied Arts, Vienna. It also featured in my studio at the AADRL.

9 Parametric Responsiveness was at the heart of our 3 year design research agenda “Responsive Environments” at the AADRL in London from 2001-2004.

10 “Parametric Urbanism” is the title of our recently completed design research cycle at the AADRL, from 2005 – 2008.

11 Le Corbusier, The City of Tomorrow and its Planning, Dover Publications, New York 1987, translated from French original Urbanisme, Paris 1925, p.5

12 Le Corbusier, The City of Tomorrow and its Planning, Dover Publications, New York 1987, translated from French original Urbanisme, Paris 1925, p.8

13 Le Corbusier, The City of Tomorrow and its Planning, Dover Publications, New York 1987, translated from French original Urbanisme, Paris 1925, p.15

14 Frei Otto might be considered as the sole true precursor of parametricism.

15 Le Corbusier, The City of Tomorrow and its Planning, Dover Publications, New York 1987, translated from French original Urbanisme, Paris 1925, p.18

16 Frei Otto, Occupying and Connecting – Thoughts on Territories and Spheres of Influence with Particular Reference to Human Settlement, Edition Axel Menges, Stuttgart/London 2009

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, p.45

18 Within the AADRL research agenda of “Parametric Urbanism” we also always started with material analogues that were then transposed into the domain of digitally simulated  self-organisation.

19 Ibid. p.64

20 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 II. International Symposium of the Sonderforschungsbereich 230, Stuttgartr 1991, p.139

21 This is what we at ZHA imposed within the urban guidelines for our Singapore masterplan.

22 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.

Parametricism and the Autopoiesis of Architecture Lecture by Patrik Schumacher, SCI-Arc, Los Angeles, September 2010 

Plus: post-lecture debate with Eric Owen MossPublished in: Log 21, winter 2011

Thanks. It’s great to be here. I had two great days to see what’s going on here and I think what I have to say speaks, to a certain extent, criticallyto what is going on here. The lecture is a variation on a lecture I have been giving this year. I’ve added an element that relates to the book, The Autopoiesis of Architecture, which is an attempt to create a comprehensive and unified theory of architecture, and which features parametricism as the last chapter of volume two. The argument is that parametricism continues the autopoiesis of architecture, which is the self-referentially closed system of communications that constitutes architecture as a discourse in contemporary society. The book is in two volumes. Volume one, a new framework for architecture, is coming out in December, [released Dec 7, 2010] and then a new agenda for architecture appears in volume two, probably six months later. It is difficult to summarize, but just to raise a bit of curiosity about this, I will make an argument for why a comprehensive unified theory is of interest. 

A comprehensive unified theory of and for architecture is important if you are trying to lead 400 architects across a multiplicity of projects, touching all aspects and components of contemporary architecture in terms of programmatic agendas and at all scales. With a unified theory one is better prepared to manage the different designs, designers, and approaches that run in different directions, potentially fight each other, contradict each other, and might stand in each other’s way. I am also teaching at a number of schools, the Architectural Association Design Research Laboratory [AA DRL] being one of them, an expanding group that is now 150 to 160 students. Here again there the issue of trying to converge efforts so that people don’t trip over each other and get in each other’s way. The need for a unified theory is first of all to eliminate contradictions within one’s own efforts – so one doesn’t stand in one’s own way all the time. If you go around from jury to jury, from project to project, you say one thing here, another thing

there, and yet further ideas come to mind elsewhere; by the fourth occasion you might be saying things and doing things that don’t gel, don’t cohere with the first three. You might be developing ideas about architecture’s societal function. You might be concerned with what is architecture, what is not architecture, to demarcate architecture, for instance against art and engineering . You might think of yourself to participate in something like an avant-garde and so you might try to develop a theory of the avant-garde. Or you might reflect about your dependence on design media, and so you try to develop a theory of architecture’s medium; then about design processes, i.e. design process theory. You wonder about aesthetic values and the notion of beauty, whether it is still relevant. Y ou try to develop a theory of beauty, an aesthetic theory. And you might be concerned with phenomenology, with perception: H ow do we perceive space, how do subjects orient themselves in space?   Next might be t he concept of style: Is it still relevant? Y ou try to develop a theory of style. You try to read the history of architecture in a certain fashion,  … and so it goes on and on, partial theory upon partial theory … and you do all this to position yourself with respect to contemporary architecture. D ifferent authors, different thinkers, might undertake and spend half their careers on any of those issues. Some of us might do two or three of these. Observing oneself and others pursuing such partial theories it makes sense to ask whether these things can be brought into a coherent system of ideas where they might be able to forge a kind of trajectory that has to do with guiding practice. You can only lead a coherent practice with a coherent (deep and comprehensive) theory. 

No one has attempted a unified theory since Le Corbusier, and perhaps since the book The International Style, or perhaps since the work of Christian Norberg-Schultz (Intentions in Architecture). F or a long time it has been nearly taboo even to start thinking about such an idea. I find it very interesting that the concept of style, as promoted in The International Style, had returned after it was abandoned by most of the early modernists . The return of the concept  - as international style -  became a factor in the phenomenon of the style that dominated the transformation of the global built environment for 50 years. It contributed to the generation of an unprecedented level of material freedom and plenty, aligned, of course, with the growth of industrial civilization. In the 1970s it became clear that the principles and values that had defined modern architecture for half a century were no longer the principles and values through which architecture could facilitate the further progress of world civilization. Modernism experienced a massive crisis, was abandoned. Everything had to be questioned, rethought which led to a free reigning, free-wheeling, browsing, and brainstorming discourse. This also brought forth a new cast of characters, an unapologetic intellectual pluralism, and a sense that all systems (grand narratives) are bankrupt. All this made sense at this particular historical moment. But t hat doesn’t mean that all attempts to cohere a unified theory are to be dismissed forever. After a period of questioning, brainstorming and free-wheeling experimentation new provisional conclusions must be drawn, decisions must be made about how to move a new, promising project forward in a clear way. The necessity of this cannot be denied.

So, to raise some curiosity about this idea, let me discuss the chapter structure of volume one. After the introduction it all starts with a chapter on architectural theory, which is put forward as an important, necessary component of architecture. It actually marks the inception and origin of architecture with Alberti 500 years ago in the early Renaissance. That’s where I say architecture starts. Everything before that was not architecture, it was some form of traditional building. Most of this book is an attempt to observe architecture and its communication structures, its key

principles, distinctions, methods, practices. I t’s a comprehensive discourse analysis of the discipline, and from that develops a normative agenda of selecting, or filtering out, the pertinent tendencies, the permanent communication structures, and the variable communication structures that have been evolving within the frame of the permanent structures. All this is elaborated in order to forge a statement and position on how to move forward. To make this more digestible I have extracted poignant theses from the theory, and I will just read a few here. Thesis one is that the phenomenon of architecture can be most adequately grasped if it is analyzed as an autonomous network or autopoetic system of communications. So I am not talking about architecture as simply a collection of buildings. I’m not talking about it as a profession or a practice. I’m not talking about it only as an academic discipline. Rather, I am concerned with how all of these activities are joined together to create a system of communications. Thesis four states there is no architecture without theory. Thesis six contains the notion that resolute autonomy, or what Luhmann calls self-referential closure, is a prerequisite of architecture’s effectiveness in an increasingly complex and dynamic social environment. The notion of a self-enclosed autonomy of the discipline means that we as architects and as a discourse as a whole need to define the purposes that guide us, the conceptual structures and modes of arguments that are legitimate and meaningful to us, what tasks to focus on and how to pursue them. The kind of network of communications that we constitute determines this. In contemporary society there is no other authority we can appeal to which would instruct architecture with respect to the built environment and its evolution. Neither politics, nor clients, nor science, nor morality. We have the burden as a collective to determine the way forward. That’s what I mean by autonomy – the autonomy to adapt to an environment and to stay relevant in it. And that is not guaranteed. 

I also discovered that only by differentiating the avant-garde as a specific subsystem can contemporary architecture actively participate in the evolution of society. I believe that institutions like SCI-Arc and the AA which seem to be one step removed from the burdens of delivering state-of-the-art solutions here and now, are a necessary condition for architecture to rethink and upgrade itself continuously. Thesis ten suggests that in a society without a control center architecture must regulate itself and maintain its own mechanisms of evolution in order to remain adaptable in an ecology of evolving societal subsystems. These subsystems are constituting society according to the notion of society underlying this discourse. There can be no external determination imposed upon architecture, neither by political bodies nor by paying clients, except in the negative, trivial sense of disruption. Yes, they can stop your project. Maybe they can clamp down and deny permission, but they obviously cannot constructively intervene. The same occurs with other so-called subsystems of society, like the legal system, science, the arts, etc. They are all self-regulating discourses. Thesis 16 suggests that avant-garde styles are designed research programs. If I talk about style or use the concept of style I am not necessarily alluding to all its connotations. I am making an effort to redefine style as a valid category of contemporary discourse, because to just let it drop to the side would be an impoverishment of contemporary discourse. The notion of style is one of the few ideas that is meaningful beyond the confines of architectural discourse. For the world at large it’s the primary category of understanding architecture, and we need to engage with that. All avant-garde styles are design research programs. They begin as progressive design research

programs, and parametricism is now in that phase. They mature to become productive dogmas, which happened with modernism. And there is productivity in the ability to routinize insights for rapid dissemination and execution. And obviously all styles end up as degenerate dogmas.  That is their trajectory. Thesis 17: Aesthetic values encapsulate a condensed collective experience within useful dogmas. Their inherent inertia implies that they (values) progress via revolution rather than evolution. Aesthetic values obviously shift with historical progress. You need to relearn your aesthetic sensibilities to find those that are productive and viable and that allow you to exist and be productive in contemporary life. The same goes for moral sensibilities. I am arguing, for instance, that minimalist sensibilities have to be fought and suppressed because they don’t allow you to adapt to contemporary life. Thesis 19: Architecture depends on its medium, enormously. Parametricism is also a product of the development of the medium of architecture. Architectural communication is happening primarily within the medium of the drawing, becoming the digital model, becoming the parametric model, and the network of scripts. Architecture depends on its medium in the same way the economy depends on money and politics depends on power. These specialized media sustain a new plane of communication that depends on the credibility of the respective medium that remains inherently vulnerable to inflationary tendencies. If you overdo make-believe renderings, if they are not backed up by reality, there is a danger of inflating and losing credibility, but without this compelling medium you would never be able to convince yourself, or anybody else, to project complex, large-scale projects into a distant future, or to coalesce the enormous amount of resources and people needed to support and believe in a coordinated effort. Architecture, of course, also needs, with its increasing complexity of tasks and agendas, to upgrade its medium, just as money did. Money is no longer coinage; it became paper money, became electronic money. Administrative power is also benefiting from the microelectronic revolution in terms of administering, controlling, connecting, and directing. Each of these social subsystems has a specialized social medium. All these media evolve together with the tasks they take on. One more thesis, Thesis 23: Radical innovation presupposes newness. Newness is first of all otherness. The new is produced by blind mechanisms rather than creative thought. Strategic selection is required to secure communicative continuity, and adaptive pertinence. 

*  *  *  *

Now I want to talk a little about the theoretical sources that allow me to work out a comprehensive unified theory of architecture with confidence and conviction. To do that, one of the key things you have to grasp is the societal function, or the raison d’être, of architecture in the world – why it came into being, why it took certain forms and moved toward certain developments, and what the best bet is for staying relevant and continuing to play an important role. This requires some sense of the overall social process and its workings. For the first decade of my architectural life, beginning in the early 1980s, I looked at Marxism and historical materialism as the kind of overarching theoretical edifice through which to think what is going on in architecture. When I went into architecture at the University of Stuttgart, I was joining the late modern period. People were still convinced of modernism. There was still hi-tech – Foster and Rogers were still the prominent going tendency. I was into it, but one or two years into my studies, I discovered postmodernism in the writing of Robert Venturi and Charles Jencks’s The

Language of Post-Modern Architecture. And so I changed, and, in fact, the university changed. And a few years later there was a radical shift to deconstructivism. It seemed that in the 1980s, every two or three years there was a revolution in style, in paradigm, in outlook, and in values. I think that period left a mark on some people’s general philosophical outlook . Soon there was a pluralism of styles. It seems that since then the kind of monolithic, cumulative, trajectory of modernism is a thing of a past era and that we’re now living in a world of continuous flux and splintering, fragmenting trajectories and ever-changing values. However, this is a historical illusion. 

In my search for a credible theory of architecture and theory of contemporary society I discovered Niklas Luhmann’s social systems theory. Luhmann’s fundamental premise is that all social phenomena or events depend on systems of communication. He steps back from Marxist materialism to a kind of abstraction, but one that I think is plausible. You always have to abstract to theorize. To focus on communications is interesting because if you think about everybody’s life process – where the bottlenecks are, where the crux of your problems is, your issues – you are always coping with social systems, your ability to communicate within them, to find a position within them. Even the physical world only gets to you through systems of communication. For example, if you’re struck by illness your main problem will be whether you have health insurance, whether you have people you can communicate with, whether you are imbedded in a system of communications with rights and the ability to speak. If you want to traverse physical space your issue will be whether you have money, an airline ticket. The bottleneck will be traffic, other people’s attempts to travel, security controls at airports, etc. You are protected if you have the ability to buy a hotel room, an apartment, switch on the heater, pay the bills. Communication structures everyone’s interface with the physical world and our relations with each other. T hink about architecture: we construct projects only through communications, whether through drawings, contracts, phone calls, emails: communications, upon communications, upon communications – that’s what runs this world. Everything goes through that needle’s eye. 

Luhmann’s philosophy of history differs from both Marx’s and Hegel’s. I insist an architectural theorist must possess a philosophy of history, a theory of historical development. Luhmann looks at history in terms of modes of social or societal differentiation – demarcating epochs. Today societies are organized in terms of functional differentiation. This is what Luhmann calls functionally differentiated society comprised of the great function systems of society as parallel systems that co-evolve with each other as autonomous discourses, i.e. as systems of communication like politics, law, economics, science, education, health, mass media, and art. A politician has no way of influencing scientific truth. (What is to be done with that knowledge is perhaps a matter of political discourse). The economy is also separate from politics and has its own autonomous domain and communication system, based on money and exchange in the market. The reverse is also true: science can deliver knowledge, but science cannot instruct politics. The same independence holds with respect to art and science. The beautiful cannot be scientifically determined. The truth might be ugly, but thruth is not a matter of aesthetics. T his is Luhmann’s picture of society, which I very, very briefly sketch here. Luhmann has in fact written comprehensive analyses of all these social subsystems, but he did not write about architecture. He fits architecture - anachronistically - into the art system, but really didn’t talk much about it. I have been reading Luhmann for about 15 years, and it increasingly occ urred to

me that architecture could be theorized in the same way. Architecture is one of those great function systems of contemporary society, or functionally differentiated society. That is the primary premise/thesis of ‘The Autopoiesis of Architecture’. Just a few more points about what this means. Luhmann discovered a series of important processes which determine these different systems within the era of modernity. The emerging market-orientation of the economy, the liberalization of the economy, is the pertinent way for the economy to become an autopoetic system. The political system has been evolving and succeeding through democratization, and only through democratization does it become a truly autopoetic, self-referentially closed system. The legal system found its autonomy and forward drive through positivism rather than natural law or god given legal discourse. Art discovered its self-programming in romanticism. All of these mechanisms mean that these systems become autonomous and adaptive to each other. They become versatile, innovative, progressive, and ever-evolving. All these processes are established somewhere between 1800 and 1900. My thesis here is that t he concept of space, or the spatialization of architecture, is the equivalent of the democratization of the political system, the liberalization of the economy, etc. 

As Luhmann was analyzing these different function systems he realized that – despite their differences – they share parallel structure . Each in their own unique way, they are all facing parall el, or comparative, problems: How could they demarcate themselves? How could they cohere around an elemental operation? How could they represent within themselves the differences between them and their environment? Luhmann discovered that each of these systems has a binary code, and programs that elaborate how the code values will be used in concrete cases. Each has its specific medium, such as money for the economy, and they all have a unique societal function, which acts as a kind of evolutionary attractor for the differentiation and autonomization of the respective system. This unique and distinct function unfolds in a series of tasks. Each of these systems projected itself forward through something Luhmann called self-descriptions. This means that within each discourse there are theoretical reflections via great treatises, written accounts of trying to think through and argue the function, the purpose, the raison d’être of each of the function systems. So within the political system there is political theory. The legal system developed together with jurisprudence. Science developed together with epistemology, the philosophy of science. And architecture has architectural theory, but only a deep and comprehensive kind of architectural theory can serve as self-description. In volume two I go through some of them: Alberti’s Ten Books on Architecture; Durand’s lectures on architecture for the era of neoclassicism; Le Corbusier’s Towards a New Architecture for modernism; and The Autopoesis of Architecture for our times, for parametricism. We can identify in every function system a so-called lead distinction. The lead distinction for architecture is form versus function. You find it in Alberti. You find it in all major self-descriptions. This lead distinction is the re-entry of the system-environment distinction into the system. It represents the distinction of the system of architecture against its environment – that is, against the totality of society – within architecture. So with the category of form, architecture represents itself to itself as distinct from function, which is the category representing the external world reference of architecture. The lead distinction of the economy is the distinction of price versus value: price is the internal reference; value is the external reference. In science it istheory versus evidence, in the law norm versus fact etc. There are further parallels between these function systems. To identify the respective structures in architecture that coincide with the structures found in the other function systems has been a creative puzzle-solving exercise, but in

the end a coherent picture emerges that allows me to take a position with respect to all of the partial theories I have been developing over the years.

*  *  *  *

Let me show a few pictures of MAXXI in Rome as a reminder that there is a certain credibility in realizing projects that follow the principles I’m talking about. The Rome project is a field project. It has a very stringent formalism. At the same time it is very capable of adapting to contexts, in terms of continuing field conditions, aligning with an urban grid on one side and with a separate urban grid on another side, incorporating existing architectures, and managing to create a coherent space around a corner. I would argue that it does a lot of difficult things with ease and elegance. Some of the strong alignments with the context go right through the building. There’s a sense of bringing together disparate elements under a single formalism, with flow lines irrigating the space. One of the ambitions that were realized are found in the moments of deep visual penetration, affording the transparency and legibility of the complex organization. In the central communication hub, ramps and staircases follow the formal language of walls and ribs, creating something which is as coherent as it is complex. Formal coherency is a precondition for generating an overall complexity without creating visual chaos. Although MAXXI was designed 10 years ago, it is a (successful, early) parametricist project. T he proliferation of lines, bundling, converging, and departing from one another, creates a field rather than a space.

 

So let me define parametricism. First of all, a conceptual definition: all elements of architecture have become parametrically malleable. That’s both fundamental and profound. The advantage of this is the intensification of relations both internally, within a design project, a building, and externally, with its context and surroundings. There is a very fundamental ontological shift with respect to the base components and primitives constituting an architecture. For the previous 2,000 years, if you like, including modernism, architecture was working with platonic solids, with rigid, hermetic, geometric figures, and just composing them. Compared with classical architecture Modernism was allowed to stretch proportions, was able to give up symmetries, and instead had a kind of dynamic equilibrium and more degrees of freedom. These changes moved these geometric figures from edifice to space with all the advantages of abstraction and versatility this move entails. But the base primitives remained, nothing else. Now, if you look at the kinds of primitives we are working with today, it is a totally different world – splines, blobs, nurbs, particles, all organized by scripts. I think it started with deconstructivism, to a certain extent, and then Greg Lynn talking about blobs in 1994-95. When we were teaching at Columbia in ’93, we were creating dynamic, and cross-inflected textures and fields. This was also the

beginning of certain computational mechanisms. Instead of drawing with ruler and compass, making rigid lines and rigid figures, we worked with dynamical systems. That’s a new ontology, which cannot but leave a profound, radically transformative mark on what we do. If we succeed, and I have no doubt, parametricism will succeed, we’ll change the physiognomy of this planet and its built environment, just the way modernism did for 50 years in the 20th century. The recession over the last two years put a bit of a damper on this, but that should not be misunderstood as a failure or refutation of this kind of work. In fact, architecture continues to invest in digital technology, fabrication systems, etc., and any prohibitive cost is diminishing as a factor. An economic recession cannot stand in the way of universalizing these principles. Parametricism is the way we do urbanism and architecture now.

* * * *

So the thesis is clear: parametricism is the great new style after modernism. I consider postmodernism and deconstructivism to be transitional styles, or transitional episodes. I think that architectural innovation and history proceed by the succession of styles. These are the great paradigms and research programs by which architecture redefines itself. Postmodernism and deconstructivism are temporary phenomena, a decade each. Parametricism is already 15 years down the line. Design research programs establish the conditions for the collective design research needed to agree on the fundamentals that add up to an overall research project. If you are fighting over fundamentals every time you start a new project, you cannot progress. Here I draw not on Luhmann so much as on the philosophy of science as projected by Thomas Kuhn, theorizing paradigm shifts, and in particular I draw on Imre Lakatos’ theory of scientific research programs . Science is founded, or re-founded, with certain paradigmatic categories, principles, anticipations, and intuitions about how a science could progress, and on that basis, after a revolutionary period of paradigm exploration , a new paradigm or research program has to emerge and win the competitive battle, and then reconstitute cumulative research. Like a research program, a shared style implies that you are formulating pertinent desires, framing and posing problems to work on, and you are strategically constraining the solution space. We are identifying problems and are trying to solve these problems by means of parametric systems, by exploring the power of malleability in the elements. The style imposes a formal a priori. There are very strong analogies in science. For example, Newton set up a certain set of principles by which every phenomenon was investigated, probed, and modeled. From problem to problem, the same principles are held steady, otherwise there is no testing, no research. Innovation requires this kind of steady, collective effort. It is the condition of any progress. 

We can think of the history of architecture in terms of cycles of innovation and shifts between revolutionary periods, when the paradigm is no longer working, as happened in the late ’60s, the ’70s, and early ’80s. You couldn’t really go on after Pruitt-Igoe was exploded. The principles architects were relying on were exhausted. That’s also why SCI-Arc was founded – because the old university way of doing things couldn’t continue, it was bankrupt. The situation required a sense of freewheeling brainstorming. Architecture drew on philosophers, and fundamental questions were asked. It’s interesting that today philosophy has rece ded, we’ve reached a different stage. We have drawn conclusions and learned our lessons; we have internalized new forms of thinking and argumentation, new values, new philosophies, and now we have to forge ahead, developing a new architecture. Every new generation has to relearn the raison d’être of

what we do, but that doesn’t mean that what we are doing is up for discursive destruction or disposition every second year. At the early stages of a new convergence you have to become accustomed to living with a lot of failures, a lot of difficulties, a lot of implausibilities. That’s why we need the avant-garde: where there is methodical tolerance, where there are dry runs, experiments, and manifesto projects; and you can’t expect to immediately compete with the mainstream state- of- the- art. You have to stick to your principles and not allow pragmatic concerns to push you to fall back on old models, old solutions, which are easy and accepted. You’ve got to go it the difficult way. You’ve got to go it the consistent way. The dogmatic way. That’s what Newton did also. It’s important to give a conceptual definition of parametricism in terms of parametric malleability, but there is also an operational definition of parametricism. When I first started to talk about parametricism I was talking about formal heuristics, but now I find it necessary to also talk about functional heuristics, because a style is not just a matter of form and formalisms. Each style also introduces a particular attitude and way of comprehending and handling functions and program. Any serious style must take a position on these issues, and I think we have a different attitude and position with respect to function than the modernists. We need both functional heuristics and formal heuristics. This is not something I am dogmatically imposing. I’m just observing that I, my friends, my students, naturally adhere to these principles without fail. Their hands would fall off rather than draw straight lines. Is anybody here drawing a triangle, a square, or a circle? Ever again? No!

Postmodernism and deconstructivism celebrated collage, interpenetration, and layering in an unmediated way, but this notion of pure difference and collage, which is in fact the default condition of spontaneous urban development after the collapse of modernism, is invested only in just the proliferation of pure difference, of piling up unrelated elements against unrelated elements, etc. But within the discourse of parametricism that is taboo. Modernism, seriality, repetition are out of the question. Instead e verybody’s is putting down their own shape, form, material – all uncoordinated. So, if the modernist recipes as well as their spontaneous antitheses are rejected, where are we going?We are trying to create a second nature, complex variegated order , at Zaha Hadid Architects and at the different schools where we teach. I am trying to formulate the positive principles that determine the new physiognomy , that define a new way of working with parametrically malleable, soft forms. Soft forms are able to incorporate a degree of adaptive intelligence. They are no longer just forms, but may have gravity or structural constraints, material constraints, performative logics inbuilt that make them intelligent. The second positive principle, or dogma, which all of you here always demand of yourselves and which your teachers will demand of you as students, is differentiation. If you are building differentiated systems with some kind of law of differentiation, whether you work only with smooth gradients, or whether you work with thresholds, or singularities, you will always work with laws, rule-based systems of differentiation. These can be applied meaningfully in, for instance, the environmental adaptation of facades to create an intelligent differentiation of elements. You can do this by taking data sets like sun exposure maps and make them drive an intelligent differentiation of brise-soleil elements, which are scripted off the data set. But you can also apply this kind of technique to urbanism. We’re talking about urban fields, about the lawful differentiation of an urban fabric according to relevant data sets.Once you have a series of these internally differentiated systems, you can think about

establishing correlations between them, where one system drives the other. These are all co-present systems, which become representations of each other. They might be ontologically rather different, radically other. There will be multiple systems, each differentiated. T hen you can establish correlations. Here just a simple example of a tower (ZHA towers for a New York Olympic Village) that interfaces with the ground and creates a kind of resonance with it.

 

Here is another tower, from the Hadid Masterclass (Peter Mitterer, Matthias Moroder, Peter Pichler): the way the facade is correlated with the horizontal section of a tower has to do with the programmatic shift from an office area to a residential area. And of course you can try to mechanize these correlations in terms of associative logics. What is important here for me is that we are moving from single-system projects, which are a kind of first stage – too abstract to really grip in reality – to the inter-articulation of multiple subsystems, to multi-system correlations. The principles of parametricism, in terms of its heuristics or operational definition, provide failsafe tools for criticism and self-criticism of project development and project enhancement. You can always identify where the rigid forms still persist, where there is still too much simple repetition, where there are still unrelated elements. You can always ask for further softening, further differentiation, and further correlation of everything with everything else. There’s always more to script and to correlate in order to further intensify the internal consistency and cross-connectedness, the resonance within a project and within a context. It’s a never-ending trajectory of a project’s progression.The intensification of relations in architecture reflects the intensification of communication among all of us, everyday and with everything. A building can no longer be a silo out in the greenfield; it needs to be connected in an urban texture, needs to be accessible, have internal differentiation, yet have a sense of continuity in the field it participates within. Functional heuristics: There are some taboos in terms of handling functions. We avoid thinking in terms of essences. We avoid stereotypes and strict typologies. We also avoid designating

functions to strict and separated and discrete zones. These are taboos for all of us. Instead, we think in terms of gradient fields of activity, about variable social scenarios calibrated by various event parameters. We think in terms of actor-artifact networks. That’s the way we break down a program, a task. And that makes sense within contemporary society. The formal and functional heuristics of parametricism coalesce, they make sense together. To translate these functions into form you need the formal heuristics I discussed earlier. Clearly, parametric systems or techniques could be used as technologies of design by modernists like Norman Foster; they could also be used by neoclassicists. The point is that the tools themselves have great potential, but we need to drive these potentials and draw decisive conclusions and give value and direction to the utilization of these tools. That is the difference between a set of techniques and a style, which depends on these techniques, albeit not exclusively, but drives them to a new destiny. Foster’s British Museum dome could only have been done with parametric tools. Every joint is different, every panel is different. The use of parametrics made this possible, but the spirit of this application is the spirit of modernism – with the aim of neutralizing the differences, making them inconspicuous. Here all elements are different but they want to appear the same. Against that I put forward a new kind of “artistic project”, the project of driving the conspicuous amplification of differences. (See example from the Hadid Masterclass (Maren Klasing & Martin Krcha) below). So a difference in curvature is transcoded into radically different conditions of ribbing, of gridding, of dense networking, perhaps engendering a phase change at a certain threshold. This is much more prone to the development of versatile conditions and different atmospheres, which bleed into each other instead of establishing disparate zones. I think our work forms a much more pertinent image and vehicle of contemporary life forces and patterns of social communication than that big Foster dome. 

 

This emphasis on differentiation, the amplification of deviations, rather than neutralization and compensation, is also related to the difference between exploratory design research and problem solving. Problem solving is the engineering side, the side of parametric technique. In contrast, when we are talking about parametricism as style, we’re talking about teasing out the as yet unknown potentials of these techniques but with the general direction clearly set by the parametricist heuristic principles. This has been going on for quite a while now. I believe that we are on the cusp of moving from an avant-garde condition into claiming the mainstream. Most of our projects, even most of our built works are hypotheses, manifestos, but I think some of our projects go beyond that and are becoming compelling success stories in the real world.

   

The projects now coming out of the office show the richness of our formal vocabulary and the richness of types of structures we are addressing. There’s a kind of unity within difference, or difference within unity, moving across various scales: Endless forms. But these endless forms are there to organize and articulate life. So: form powers function. That’s the new thesis. Spatial organization sustains social organization. Can we demonstrate, control, and predict this? To a certain extent, I would argue, we can. If we look at the history of parametricism, in fact it’s the history of the whole evolution of architecture. The fundamental thesis is that social order requires spatial order, that society doesn’t exist without a structured environment, and that society can only evolve if it is able to enhance and intricately structure its built environment as well. Architecture provides the necessary substrate of cultural evolution.

 

Parametricism and the Autopoiesis of ArchitectureTranscription – Post-Lecture Discussion between Patrik Schumacher and Eric Owen Moss

 

EOM: Let me say I have huge appreciation for the colossal self-confidence and enormous effort required to wrap your arms around contemporary architecture, and to insist on a number of organizational categories that circumscribe architecture, and re-define its mission. Congratulations.

I always thought one of the keys to architecture was to outwork everyone else. You’re certainly doing that.

You rely on linguistics in a way that I don’t think you acknowledge. You know Shakespeare made a comment about “a rose by any other name”, which suggests that labeling is not a surrogate for meaning. You’re in love with labeling – and one of the fascinating things about the act of naming is that it may facilitate a logic of nomenclature while confusing the search for the meaning the logic claims to deliver. You should acknowledge your love of labeling.

I remember submitting my Dad’s poetry to Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, who returned the material to me with a letter that said: “we don’t really know how to locate this text within our publishing sub-divisions. Is the this religion? history? linguistics? poetry? It doesn’t conform to our categories of production.” So ipso facto, the “poetry” was exorcised because it didn’t confirm Farrar’s labeling pro forma. Be careful you don’t eliminate instincts in architecture that don’t fit the a priori Parametric formulations….

Years ago a well known religious thinker, an Anglican named Malcolm Muggeridge, made a comment that stuck in my head. Muggeridge was a fan of Alexander Solzhenitsyn at the time the Russians were putting Solzhenitsyn into the Gulag. Do you know what he said? He said the Russians could cover the earth with concrete, but the concrete would inevitably crack, and out of the cracks would come…..Solzhenitsyn. An architecture metaphor for sure, don’t you think?

Maybe you’re pouring too much concrete.

Do you know Oswald Spengler?

PS: Sure.

EOM: So your efforts have a fascinating antecedent, Spengler’s Decline of the West. Almost nobody reads Spengler anymore. I think the book was written in the years after WW1. But Spengler, more than any conceptual thinker I know, relies on categorical imperatives. The book is a stupendous effort to organize, bracket, and label all of human history. You’ve reduced the task, but Spengler’s your namesake. You take on a smaller piece – architecture. He took on everything. His is a wonderful act of will. I remember one section called blood over money, which was a critique of the notion, so predictably American, that in the end, everything is about business. And if you don’t subscribe to that, you’re somehow not a grown up. But Spengler noted that there was something intractable, deeper than the “business is business” proposition. Blood over money. Dionysius over Apollo in other words. And the point was that those who analyze without reference to blood, make an important omission. You inherited a Spenglerian antecedent, but you’ve omitted the blood. You’re alone with Apollo, I think.

You also characterized Newton as a systematizer. But like most systematizers -- Freud, Marx, Darwin -- he omitted some essentials, electromagnetism in particular. You’ll argue, that, notwithstanding the omissions, the ontology galvanizes a movement, assures a clear direction, and above all, a Pied Piperism with lots of followers, and the end something for the future to build on. The problem is “something to build on” so often becomes a policy of established intransigence. It has to be dismantled along with its adherents who become obstacles to any contrary instincts.

And it looks like you’ve become the Parametric Pied Piper.

I prefer skepticism of all ordering mechanisms, rather than an allegiance to anyone. The stretch between the two possibilities may be where a truth lies: Truth as a stretch between prospects; the tension between options rather than the selection of one, and the elimination of the others.

Remember the appendix to Hitchcock and Johnson’s International Style? Philip told us how we could all be modern architects. And NYMOMA was his enforcer. Just follow the rules. And that codification didn’t begin the modern era. That book and his exhibit ended modern architecture as speculation, and began modernism as style. Study. Learn. Replicate. Pruitt-Igo [you and Jencks cite] wasn’t the culprit. Philip-style was the culprit. Could be argued he did the same with so-called Deconstruction. He used to tell me Deconstruction was about diagonal lines.

You also mentioned Darwin. When Darwin sailed by the cliffs of Chile, he looked up, aghast. He knew incremental evolution could never account for what he saw. You can read his doubts in The Origin of Species. Your hypothesis should include some speculation on what you may have left out. Today I think they call what Darwin suspected, catastrophism. Catastrophism is a radical and unanticipated rejection of a predicted order, a good category to include in contemporary architecture, don’t you think?

Marx is part of your historiography too. But he never anticipated the ingenuity of contemporary capitalism to re-imagine itself. Capitalism will be what is is in perpetuity, Marx thought. Its inflexibility guaranteed the advent of the proletarian state, he said. Nope. We’re still waiting. Marx missed the capitalist dexterity quotient. Dialectical materialism doesn’t work if the thesis is self-correcting. That inhibits the development of the antithesis. Both Marx, [and Hegel who you also quoted] missed the course correction capacity in their thesis/antithesis/synthesis formulation.

You mention Freud too. Again, it turns out that Oedipus and Electra don’t account for everything psychotherapeutic. No collective unconscious, for instance. No Prosaic, and so on…..again, from a student’s perspective, none of these vantage points need be exclusively so. They’re all useful to a hybrid discourse. But the proponents of each so often demand exclusivity.

The historic efforts to codify meaning in human affairs are all around us. They will shape our thought, if we allow such unequivocal paradigms to define us. But, in fact, I would argue that never are any of these hypotheses intrinsically so, and the more history moves, the more we evaluate these hypotheses in retrospect, the more we see their flaws, and the less plausible is the argument for yet another regulatory pro forma.

I applaud the power of your effort to demand a new order. That gives me something to attack, and architecture needs enemies, within and without. Contemporary architecture has too many friends.

The parametric hypothesis is extrinsically so because you insist on it, you label it, you argue for it, you build it, and you deny a plausible opposition. Will gives it its life. And will is another category you omit. Faustian man, remember? Will [and intellect] gives it a life and that makes it plausible in the realm of ideas. But it doesn’t make it intrinsically or exclusively so.

I made a book a few years ago anticipating this recent effort on your part. It’s called Gnostic Architecture, and it’s conceptually antithetical to your stated mission. It insists on improvisation, ambivalence, and the uselessness of charts. The unknown is the rule, the known the exception, in perpetuity.

By the way, you didn’t mention Nietzsche, another German contrarian. As I recall, Zarathustra told us “he would rather guess than know”. Parametrics doesn’t countenance the guessing postulate.

One other point: it seems to me that the appeal of the work of Zaha Hadid, was how rare, how idiosyncratic, how personal it was. You’ve added something to that, and removed something, simultaneously. I think, in a sense, you’ve homogenized the anomalous, [sorry, you can’t do that -- it’s not anomalous any more] described a policy position, and in doing so, you’ve depersonalized the content. This is an imprecise example, but 100 Sagrada Familias mean something different than one [and an unfinished one, at that].

Arguing for “differentiation” as a regulation, rather than an instinct for exceptions, as if differentiation ratified a democratic position for variation. But it doesn’t. I don’t know actually why, as a conceptual tactic, the “differentiated” internal content would necessarily be indicated by a “differentiated” external object. Regulating the form of choice means choice is gone. The modernists, of course, argued that the box allowed the most enduring internal flexibility. You argue that differentiation is a truer indication of the same prospect. But it seems to me, having recognized the inadequacy of the modern definition, you would also be skeptical of your own remodeling of the modern rule system -- alleging the same variable social priority, apparently, but with a new form language prescription.

We had a discussion here in the Thesis jury the other day – you may have been in that one – regarding the Louvre, once somebody’s house, and now a museum. So plausible differentiation needn’t follow the Parametric formulation.

I can feel you love making the Parametric argument. But your case may say as much about you as it does about architecture. It’s what you guys require to validate going proceeding ahead. Forgive me for the street-corner psycho-analysis. And again, nowhere a scintilla of a minutiae of an iota of doubt. Why are you doing this? Because it’s so? Or because you need it to be so? No inkling that something’s left out? I always thought that the unique voices in architecture included both an extreme self-confidence, and simultaneously, a deep skepticism of the consequences of that self-confidence.

EOM: Thanks very much. I thought it was a terrific lecture, very unusual.

PS: I just want to pick up a few of your points. The first thing to note is, yes, no system is perfect; there will be another crisis of parametricism, although I don’t know when and how. The triggering conditions for this would be either shifts in the societal environment which demand further architectural evolution or a kind of internal exhaustion of the paradigm, but that kind of exhaustion could also lead to a new trajectory of development within parametricism, in the form of a further subsidiary style. A crisis will come. That’s for sure. But to say systems and methodical system building is in itself a problem because there were a series of prior system building efforts the results of which did not last for ever —that makes no sense. Newton was replaced by Einstein, and Einstein could only exist because Newton had prepared the ground. In the same way parametricism is building on modernism. Contemporary society is changing and mutating, but it’s building on the material achievements of the Fordist production paradigm.

EOM: Do you think the world gets better?

PS: Absolutely. And I can give you examples.

EOM: There was a political theorist at Harvard who offered an alternative definition of the future, Samuel L. P. Huntington. He died in the last year or two. His prognosis was that the 21st century would replicate the social, political, and religious oppositions of the 19th century, and that the 20th century didn’t count. What’s “new”, he said, is likely to be a re-run of what’s old, quite literally. Doesn’t build on the past, improve it, make it better, or worse, and so on. A very different way to look at the parametrics of history. History stays the same? Could be. Gets different ? Perhaps. Improves? Not clear. Sequential? Chronological ? Doubtful. It’s not necessary that we agree with Huntington, but I don’t want my enemies to go away.

PS: I think for me, there is a meta-category I didn’t come to. The base category in my philosophical meta-discourse would still be “productivity”. In this respect I agree with Marx. But productivity must not only be measured in output by time unit, but output by time unit considering working conditions, and now we also have to consider sustainability and the ecological burden which production imposes. But if you put these three factors together, productivity is the alpha and omega of everything, of life, of freedom, of security, of charity, and that’s why it is the ultimate base category. I measure everything with respect to productivity in the sense of the productivity/vitality of a civilization, a civilization which increasingly sets itself free from the blind material forces it faces in its environment. That’s progress. All stages of this trajectory contributed to where we are now. Therefore, to say, for instance, that the systems of modernism were a mistake only because they went into crisis to let something else to grow on top and beyond it, is really unreasonable. You’ve just got to take the slice of time far enough apart and you see progress. I’ve grown up in the 1960s in a nation of 60 million, in Germany, where every single individual, without exception, had a higher level of standard of living, material plenty, and freedom than Louis Quatorze, the Sun King of France. Every single one of them had a heated house, running water, health care/medication, a car outside the front door, telephone, connected around the world by switching on the TV, taking the flight to a holiday destination at least once a year, and all that was universally available. That’s what fordism/modernism delivered. That’s what post-fordist network society is building upon.

EOM: Come on, Patrik…there are different kinds of progress. Material progress is not synonymous with intellectual or cultural growth. Sometimes they facilitate one another, sometimes they contradict. The world only gets better if you leave out the part that doesn’t. Yuri Daniel and Andrei Synyavski, two more Gulag candidates, wrote about a critical distinction any architecture pro forma should continue to make. One they called “freedom from”. That’s your material category – Marx; life as production; food, water, housing, and medicine. That leaves “freedom to”, which your belief in continuing progress omits. “Freedom to” do what? The answer should be supplied, one architect at a time.

PS: As well.

PS: Well, what I’m looking at, for instance, is contemporary corporate organization and the freedom and participatory culture they require to become even more productive – I mean, of course, the world is full of contradictions –

EOM: Let’s talk about some of them.

PS: Dyssynchronous development, brutality – of course, I know all of this, but at the same time, we need to look at which social structures, which spaces, which cultural tropes, which moral sensibilities produce the next level of our civilization. And what is interesting to me, is yes, you have Silicon Valley, for instance, with a certain culture the roots of which come out the counter-culture and the social revolutions of the ‘60s and ‘70s, and that’s where you have to look. You have to look at the most advanced, most intelligent, most productive social organizations, their culture, their sensibilities, their way of working, their spaces, and see if you can contribute to them, can lift them further onto the next level. That’s what I see the avant-garde of architecture to be doing. If we can speak to them and create spaces for their next level, then we know we’re on the right track.

EOM: Aren’t you using the exception to make a universal rule? And the fact that Parametrics has become more plausible and desirable in your terms, and of special interest to students doesn’t mean it’s gained credence as a measure of architecture content. The converse might also be true, that its greatest value was as speculative form language option, not as a regulation. I’m for the Penelope Theory of architecture. Odysseus’ wife took apart at night what she made during the day.

PS: I believe that we’re living in a world society where certain state-of-the-art solutions will ripple through and will be picked up quickly everywhere, so I think that mobile phones, Google, social network sites, all of this…

EOM: One at a time. I’ve got the same list…just never considered the items unequivocal assets…..

We should be more cautious about universal device acclaim.

What you call communication is often formulaic. And we operate within that a priori formulation or we can’t use the tools. E mail facilitates certain exchanges, and trivializes others. Speed isn’t

necessarily conducive to thoughtfulness. What you list as assets are simultaneously assets and liabilities. The tools made the world different. Now it’s our job to say what’s better and what’s worse, in order, perhaps, to make what’s worse better. 

EOM: I couldn’t sit and listen to this presentation for a hour or so and not be moved by it. Thank you very much.