The Politics of Parametricism Digital Technologies in Architecture

by Poole, Matthew; Shvartzberg, Manuel

• ISBN13: 9781472581662
• ISBN10: 1472581660
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2015-10-22
• Publisher: Bloomsbury Academic

Summary

Over the last decade, 'parametricism' has been heralded as a new avant-garde in the industries of architecture, urban design, and industrial design, regarded by many as the next grand style in the history of architecture, heir to postmodernism and deconstruction. From buildings to cities, the built environment is increasingly addressed, designed and constructed using digital software based on parametric scripting platforms which claim to be able to process complex physical and social modelling alike.

As more and more digital tools are developed into an apparently infinite repertoire of socio-technical functions, critical questions concerning these cultural and technological shifts are often eclipsed by the seductive aesthetic and the alluring futuristic imaginary that parametric design tools and their architectural products and discourses represent.

The Politics of Parametricism addresses these issues, offering a collection of new essays written by leading international thinkers in the fields of digital design, architecture, theory and technology. Exploring the social, political, ethical and philosophical issues at stake in the history, practice and processes of parametric architecture and urbanism, each chapter provides different vantage points to interrogate the challenges and opportunities presented by this latest mode of technological production.

Author Biography

Matthew Poole is a freelance curator and curatorial theorist. Previously, he was Programme Director of the Centre for Curatorial Studies, in the School of Philosophy & Art History at the University of Essex, UK.

Manuel Shvartzberg is an architect and researcher. He is currently based in New York City where he is a Researcher at The Temple Hoyne Buell Center for the Study of American Architecture, GSAPP and a Graduate Fellow of the Institute for Comparative Literature and Society, both at Columbia University, USA.

Table of Contents

1. Introduction
Manuel Shvartzberg, Graduate School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation, Columbia University, USA and Matthew Poole, Freelance Curator/Writer, UK

Section 1: Parametricism and Politics – Polemics

2. On Numbers, More or Less
Reinhold Martin, Graduate School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation, Columbia University, USA

3. The Political Pertinence of Parametricism: Free Market Urban Order
Patrik Schumacher, Zaha Hadid Architects, UK

4. There is No Such Thing as a Political Architecture; There is No Such Thing as Digital Architecture
Neil Leach, USC School of Architecture, USA

Section 2: Post-Humanist Critiques

5. The Always Partial System: For an Inhuman Parametricism
Benjamin Bratton, University of California, San Diego, USA

6. Is Parametricism a 21st-Century 'Racial Science'?
Manuel Shvartzberg, Graduate School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation, Columbia University, USA

7. Potential Pitfalls of Parametricism in Biological Architecture
Christina Cogdell, University of California, Davis, USA

Section 3: Techniques of (Socio-Spatio-Political) Representation

8. Speculation, Presumption and Assumption: The Ideology of Arithmetic-to-Parametric Workspace
Matthew Poole, Freelance Curator/Writer, UK

9. The Method is the Message
Laura Kurgan, Graduate School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation, Columbia University, USA

10. Architecture as Rendered Society
Andres Jaque, Andres Jaque Architects: Office for Political Innovation, Spain

Section 4: The Figure of the Practicing Architect

11. Parametric Schizophrenic
Peggy Deamer, Yale School of Architecture, USA

12. The New Political: Where the Top Down and the Bottom Up Meet
Teddy Cruz, University of California, Davis, USA

13. Parameter Value
Phillip G. Bernstein, Autodesk, USA

14. Spinoza's Geometric Ecologies
Peg Rawes, Bartlett School of Architecture, UK

Further Reading
Index