The Politics of Parametricism: Digital Technologies in Architecture

Description

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.

Matthew Poole is a curator of contemporary art and a curatorial theorist. He currently works at California State University San Bernardino, where he is the Chair of the Department of Art. 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.

The Politics of Parametricism is the book I have been waiting for; it stands alone as the best attempt yet to comprehensively understand this 'movement for the 21st century'. Most importantly, it is the first book to critically contextualise Patrik Schumacher's contributions to architectural theory, and to seriously respond to his claims ... Politics engages and explores Parametricism with great care ... has done much to untangle the mess of misconceptions and misinformation surrounding the architect's frequently controversial positions. -- Jack Self * The Architectural Review * Parametricism is the best and most comprehensive definition of the new technical object of the digital age. Is there a politics of parametricism? Is it different from the politics of the technical object of the industrial age? The answer is yes, of course. The essays in this book also prove without doubt that, in the age of parametricism, politics itself is different from what it was before the digital turn. -- Mario Carpo, Reyner Banham Professor of Architectural History and Theory, The Bartlett, UCL, UK Patrik Schumacher writes here that in parametricism participation in political controversy must be taboo. Against this prohibition, the other contributors to The Politics of Parametricism skillfully prise open his argument to reveal the controversial politics - of control, power and the market, of representation, calculation, and simulation - within. A significant and timely intervention, this collection reaffirms the power, potential and necessity of architectural critique. -- Douglas Spencer, Architectural Association School of Architecture, UK