The Digital Turn in Architecture 1992 - 2012 -- Mario Carpo Full Citation and Summary Carpo, Mario, editor. The Digital Turn In Architecture 1992 - 2012. John Wiley & Sons Ltd, 2012. This book collects a series of chronologized articles and essays previously published in Architectural Design Magazine (AD) on topic of digital design in architecture. The editor of this collection is architectural historian and theorist Mario Carpo, whose work focuses on the histories-of and relations-between architectural theory and cultural technologies. Carpo, introduces "digital design" as a distinct current of architectural theory and practice, then proceeds to chart its general theoretical development. Note that this conforms to the usual understanding of architectural history as a procession of theoretically-driven movements. Chapter Notes Introduction: Twenty years of Digital Design - Arguing that there is such a thing as digital design and that it is distinct from other architectural practices/theories - Definition of a "meaningful building of the digital age" as "[a building] that could not be designed or built without [digital tools]" (pp. 8) - Positioning the source material (from AD exclusively) within a procession of architectural movements; post-modernism deconstruction digital design - Stress on changes in electronic technologies in the early 90s, digital space for arch. and digital spaces for prod. of physical buildings - Argues that digital design emerges from theoretical response to technologies (pp. 9) - Digital design's theoretical aspects [technical theoretical both], articles will provide examples of these - Curvilinearity (blobs) -- this emerges from spline modelling, necessary continuity of curves (pp. 9) - Decentralized authorship -- variability of curves within constraints, parametric mathematical notation (multi-variable calculus), design of systems for design (pp.9) - Folds -- synthesizes continuity of form (post-modern) and formal fragmentation (deconstruction) through a technical solution [Carpo argues that this is an autonomous, internal architectural debate supported by post-modern thought (Deleuze on Leibniz)] (pp. 9-10) - Variation -- related to folds as a synthesis of continuity and fragmentation; continuity of form but differentiation within the continuity (see again post-modern thought on variation, complexity, etc.); supported by technology (pp. 10) - Nonlinearity -- def: "sometimes, nature `jumps' from one state to another in sudden and unpredictable ways, which modern science can neither anticipate nor account for." From cybernetics and systems theory to digital mysticism/romanticism, phenomenology. (pp. 10-11) - Political Ambiguity -- critique of modernity through mass-produced variation, customization, individualization which leans toward expansion of capitalism [market, liberal managerialism, disciplinary disengagement] (pp. 11-12) - Architectural Management -- BIM, information and data control necessary for full-scale execution of digitally designed buildings (pp. 12) - Participation -- Responsive environments but more so participation in design process (collaborative design, open-source notation, collective decision making); the promise of distributed decision making as emancipatory [relates to architectural management, political ambiguity, variation, and decentralized authorship] (pp. 13) - Proposal that decentralized authorship, collaboration, mass customization and mass participation will cause the most changes to architectural practice Architecture After the Age of Printing (1992) - Two articles by Peter Eisenman which Carpo proposes show continuity btwn Deconstructivism and digital design - Anti-classicism, anti-perspective, breaking of visual habits - Representational -- formal focus through "expression" (of spaces, of concepts) - Electronic tech. as enabling this break w/ prev. modes thinking arch., folding as one tool electronic tech. allows primarily through "variable curvature" (pp. 19) "Visions Unfolding: Architecture in the Age of Electronic Media" - Proposal that arch. in the age of electronic media is one that "looks back," breaking primacy of viewer in perspective (pp. 18-19) - Detaching appearance from knowledge (pp. 18), appearance becomes only the expression of (big O) Order (pp.18, 20) - Folding (from Deleuze) as the means of achieving the break since it resists knowledge/representation of the whole from any given position (pp. 19) - Drawing disengaged from physical space (pp.19); space as affective (see below), only representing order writ large as external logic (pp.20) "The Affects of Singularity" - "Affect is the conscious subjective aspect of an emotion considered apart from bodily changes." (pp. 23) - E. stresses that affective response is a natural human need (pp.25) - "Effect is something produced by an agent or cause." (pp. 23) - Inherently collective, programmatic (pp. 23) - Mediated environments [contemporary world of electronic tech.] as effective, unmediated [ie. a mythical Gothic (pp. 25)] as affective - Mediation produces its own affect in itself which replaces individual affect (pp. 23, 25), mediation as collective behaviour, mediation produces effective affect [noise reduction] (pp. 26) - Mechanical reproduction: static original static copy, human labour produces more affect ["value added"] (as surplus value) (pp. 24) - Electronic reproduction: dynamic original static copy, less human intervention produces less affect (MOP takes the lead) (pp. 24) - Major change in place of architecture in the move from mechanical to electronic - architecture loses its affective component, becomes "weak media" being effective, the user no longer knows how to react to architecture (pp. 25) - To regain the affectivity ("affective discourse") architecture should eschew individuality (expressionism) and collectivity (standardisation) for singularity - Singularity (from Kojin Karatani) = not-individuality, not-particularity, "taking the ego, the individual persona... out of the `me'..."; "The `this-ness of a `this I' or a `this dog'..." (pp. 26) Folding in Architecture (1993) - Two articles from Gregg Lynn, Carpo proposes that these show curvilinearity as emerging from an "internal and autonomous discourse" within architecture theory (pp. 28) "Architectural Curvilinearity: The Folded, the Pliant and the Supple" - Argues that smoothness is the best means of architecturally responding to heterogeneous contexts (pp. 29) - Presents two competing approaches (a "dialectic"): imposing unity (Post-Modern, reactionary) & fragmentation (Deconstructivism, avant garde) (pp. 29) - Argues that smoothness is synthetic of both positions - allows for architecture's "active involvement with external events in the folding, bending and curving form." (p. 33) - Smoothness is: - "intensive integration of differences within a continuous yet heterogeneous system" (pp. 30) - Incorporates difference into the system rather than eradicating it (pp. 30) - Non-homogenous, non-reducible (pp. 30) - Comes from extra-architectural sources (many are part of the US state apparatus) (pp. 30) - Smoothness allows complexity through pliancy which allows Folding [Deleuze] (pp. 30) - Pliancy = flexibility, local connectivity, alliances over conflicts, dependence on external forces, vicissitudinous - Vicissitude = weakness, waffling in service of tactical cunning, mutability in response to changing conditions (forces meeting in an illegible, unidentifiable whole) (pp. 31) - Stresses that the forces are "beyond control" and beyond knowledge (pp. 34) - Stresses compliance (as subterfuge; uses such words as "weaving," "entangling") with forces (pp. 36) - Folding produces smooth mixtures (Lynn uses a culinary definition of folding) (pp. 30-31) - "The two characteristics of smooth mixtures are that they are composed of disparate unrelated elements and that these free intensities become intricated by an external force exerted upon them jointly...[]... The heterogeneous elements within a mixture have no proper relation with one another. Likewise, the external force that intricates these elements with one another is outside the individual elements' control or prediction" (pp. 31) - Cohesion through viscosity (making strong local connections), affiliating contradictions through local connection (pp. 32-33) - Folding requires curvilinearity - Later sidebar on folding: that it came out of real estate speculation and has been transformed through its internalization by architectural theory while preserving its outcome of dissapearence (pp. 41-42) - Smoothness allows immersion in contexts with the least amount of resistance - Through intensive forms of organization whose operation is as follows: produce a boundary make connections to the outside internalize the newly connected elements expand the boundary [see D&G Anti-Oedipus] - Consequence for architecture: - necessity for "anexact" geometries where standard, reduction, and measurability are brought into question - Anexact [Husserl] = non-reducible yet rigorous (the shape of the geometry is knowable w/ precision, but not reducible to avg. dims or points - "inclusive stability" through subjecting "provisional types" to complexes of forces (two examples which are notable: Michael Jackson and the Mercury Man from Terminator) (pp. 37-38) - The ability for specific architects (as individual practitioners (lead designers), not organizations (even offices are left out)) to intervene upon conditions which are too complex to totally grasp (pp. 40) "Shoei Yoh, Prefectura Gymnasium" -- this is an example used to show how the ideas above manifest in a building The Architectural Relevance of Cyberspace (1995) - Two articles by John Frazer on the potential uses and responses of architecture to "cyberspace" (one theoretical discussion, one case-study) - Carpo sees this as a cybernetics revival (communication, despatialisation, anti-cannon) "The Architectural Relevance of Cyberspace" - Argues that "cyberspace" is/can-be an alter-site for global cooperation by "modelling ecologically responsible environments and using the computer as an evolutionary accelerator." (pp. 52) - "from product to process...[]... from forms, to the relationship between forms, to forms in their environment, to the relationship between forms and their users." (pp. 52) - Cyberspace = describes "the invisible spatial interconnection of computers on the Internet and it is also applied to almost any virtual spatial experience created in a computer." ("decentrilised, desynchronised, diverse, simultaneous, anarchic, customerised...[]...'self-regulating, anarchic, federated, very resilient'..." (pp. 49) - Stresses its alter affinity-group-like politics (pp. 49) - Ephemeralisation, communication, cerebral effort (pp. 49) - Virtual world and therefore "extra dimension" of the physical world and not a substitute (pp. 49) - Shows this through comparison to theatre and books where virtual worlds extend into and overlap with the physical world (pp. 50) - Then takes a sophist-idealist position that the physical world is itself virtual (this helps the "extra dimension" argument insofar as cyberspace and physical space are of the same virtual type) (pp. 50) - Important to note that Frazer sees "reality" as arbitrated (he uses two examples: the court (state apparatus) and misplacing a book (informal collective) (pp. 51) - Cyberspace as outgrowth of "cybernetic theory of architecture" (architects as designers of organizational systems and their spatial manifestations) (pp. 51-52) - New "extra dimension" allows a "requestioning [of] fundamental issues about space and the contemporary relevance of place." (pp. 52) - "Architecture as an essential organ of interaction with the environment providing antennae for both sensing and transmitting information." (pp. 52) "Architectural Experiments" - Documents an exhibition of decentralised design through a responsive geometry (pp. 53) - Decentralised through the ability for their model to take inputs locally (on essentially a LAN) and internationally (via the internet) (pp. 53-54) - "genetic techniques for design model inner logic, rather than external form" (pp. 53) - Use of genetic algorithms (see Genetic Algorithm Essentials for a more technical overview); uses a string of symbols to hold transformation instructions; the user morphs the geometry through manipulating the string indirectly though Frazer is vague on this point (pp. 56) - "computer can be used not as an aid to design in the usual sense, but as an evolutionary accelerator and a generative force." (pp. 53) The Digital and the Global (1996) - An article by Foreign Office Architects [FOA] (Farshid Moussavi and Alejandro Zaera-Polo) on their Yokohama International Port Terminal project - Carpo identifies FOA's addition of late-capitalist global processes to thinking with curvilinearity, also identifies no mention of computation [though there are many early digitally rendered perspectives included in the article] "Yokohama International Port Terminal" - Set up the present conditions of global late-capitalism (Jameson's term) - Devaluing of representation as communication due to sheer amount of information (pp. 58) - Replacement of signifying systems with material-spatial organization as "the basis of communication, exchange and consensus." (pp. 58) - "Today, occupying a spatial position might be as important as adopting a political position." (pp. 58) - The consequences for architecture: it need not represent, interpret, or signify anything (pp. 58) - Their approach: "performative," architecture as "artefact within a concrete assemblage," action, form, knowledge as a means/desire to modify, create their environment rather than explain or represent. (pp. 58) - Inability of PoMo & Deconstructivism to deal with the scale of global capitalism (let alone modernism's homogenisation) [similar to Lynn's argument] (pp. 58-59) - Use of techniques which operate "outside existing codes" [Deleuze but more AO] (pp. 59) - Decoded landscapes (deterritorialization) rather than overcoded spaces (territorialization) [similar (again) to D&G's process of capitalist reproduction] - "nomadic operativity" by engaging econ., social, urban processes through complexity rather than linearity - Stresses need for "planning in material practices" arising from need to control production of environment, indeterminacy as a failing of the architect (pp. 59) - Yokohama International Port Terminal as case study/demonstration of how their method materialises as a building (pp. 61) - Focus on mediation btwn "social machines," boundary blurring, occupation-type differentiation, stage setting (making a "battlefield" in which minority can have power), public space on private space - Short paragraph on structural/building features; folding as structurally efficient, removal of boundary between envelope and structure, structure responds to stress continuum rather than discrete "singularities" Field Conditions (1997) - Stan Allen's "Field Conditions" - "Field conditions" as a means of developing "new methodologies to model programme and space" through: (pp. 63) - Reassertion of responsibility to context; context as an obligation to which architects must comply - Focus on architecture's users and their behaviours - Focus on collectives as fields (digital) [not individuals as objects (analogue)] - "...acceptance of the real in all its messiness and unpredictability." - "the field" vs. "the lab" - Improvisation - Constraint (field conditions) over transgression (modernism) - Attention to precedent - Irreducibility - Specific definition of a field condition: "any formal or spatial matrix capable of unifying diverse elements while respecting the identity of each." (pp. 63) - Local connectivity, internal regulations as most important (more important than the shape of the whole) - No claims to systematism; no claims to timelessness or absolutism; proposes that the theory will be modified or repudiated by experimentation on site ("the real," context and "real" are often interchanged) since theory arises in relation ("dialogue") to practice (pp. 63) - Serial structure of the article ("like a catalogue") [not like a field]; discusses field conditions at two scales/two contexts through examples (pp. 63) - PART 1 -- Field Conditions in Architecture and Urbanism - "issues of construction" (pp. 63), this section presents examples of already-existing field conditions to elucidate how they land in the world - "Geometric Versus Algebraic Combination" [historical architecture] - Shows difference between field condition (algebraic) and proportion (geometric) in the by analysing the mosque in Cordoba as counterexample to classical geometric unity (pp. 65) - Logic of the field is replicable and therefore expandable through local algebraic combination of elements with no overarching structure which morph through repetition (the module) (pp. 65-66) - "Walking Out of Cubism" [art] - Shows difference between field condition (post-minimalism) and sequence (minimalism) (pp. 67) - Minimalism as producing meaning in the relation (the space) btwn viewer and art (clarity, immediacy, unity, concepts, definitiveness, structures) (pp. 68) - Post-Minimalism as producing meaning in the record of the process of production (messiness, doubt, informality, visibility, phenomena) (pp. 68) - Local relationships; generation of form through "sequences of events" (simple seriality producing complex outcomes) (pp.69) - Offloading control to rule systems, techniques, and materials with the artist (architect) directing their flows (pp. 69) - "Field Constructions" [contemporary architecture] - Sums up the section through a discussion of detailing, Renzo Piano's design process of form from details (pp. 69) - Detail as closest to construction, hyper-control of minutiae accumulates into a composition (field of responsive details) - Means of going beyond form-construction opposition - Field as material condition (the arraying of details into a building) not discursive (pp. 69) - "...by understanding construction as a `sequence of events', it becomes possible to imagine an architecture that can respond fluidly and sensitively to local difference while maintaining overall stability." (pp. 69) - PART 2 -- Distributions and Combinations: Towards a Logistics of Context - "questions of composition and the urban context" (pp. 63) - "Distributions" - Introduces the sections to come as "organizational principles" which propose new ways of composing parts in relation to each other beyond modernist montage and collage (pp. 70) - "The American City: Open Field" [Field] - The rectilinear grid as "prototypical field condition" (pp. 71) - Uses the "American City" to show how rectilinear grids impose measure upon territories while morphing to accommodate existing conditions; how grids can be attached to larger networks (pp.71) - "Thick Surfaces: Moirés, Mats" [Figure in field] - Figure as an emergent effect of the field; figure as moments of intensity (peaks, valleys) in the field (pp. 71), authentic differentiation as local within the field (pp. 72) - Moiré pattern as exemplary through the emergence of figural patterns through overlay of two grids (pp. 72) - Combinations of fields as a general means of producing moments of intensification; combining fields means thickening what is usually horizontal; thickening makes fuzzy borders at the edge of figures (pp. 72) - "Digital Fields" [Field-Field] - Digital atomization of data flattens hierarchies and evens out value (pp. 73) - Flattening means every piece of a composition is as important and necessary as every other piece (pp. 73) - Produces the possibility of field-field relations when they come in contact/locality with each other (an extension of the previous section essentially; ie. what happens when surfaces thicken?) (pp. 73) - Change in scale from single objects to aggregates - "Flocks, Schools, Swarms, Crowds" [Producing Fields] - Fields produced through serial application of local rules on parts in a whole (pp. 73) - Fields as emergent and therefore at the edge of control (control of the whole is not possible, but control of each part is) (pp. 73, 76) - Able to negotiate obstruction through local adjustment (pp. 75) - Uses flocks and crowds as examples - Conclusion -- A Logistics of Context - Proposes that field conditions - allows architecture to deal with complex urban contexts (pp. 77) - gives a way out of PoMo-Deconstruction debate through eschewing zero-sum thinking ("relinquishing control over the uncontrollable") (pp. 77) - Proposing that there are limits of architectural control over city and that they must be recognized and complied-with [a "Logistics of Context"] (pp. 77) - Architecture as using field conditions to manage the urban condition of multiplicity, fragments-without-totalitites (pp. 78) Nonlinear Architecture (1997) - Two articles by Charles Jencks which cross-reference systems theory to architectural design (nonlinear architecture) and present some examples of it (pp. 80) - Carpo relates the positions in Jencks articles to anti-tech. positions (mystical, organicist, naturalistic, etc...) on digital technologies (pp. 81) "Nonlinear Architecture: New Science = New Architecture?" - Makes the assertion that when there is a shift in the "basic framework of thought" there must be a shift in architecture (as opposed to "building") since architecture "is embedded in the reigning mental paradigms" (pp. 83) - Argues that this has happened with the (incomplete) movement from mechanistic to nonlinear sciences (pp. 83) - Nonlinear sciences posit a "creative, free, self-organizing" universe (pp. 83) - Proposes a non-linear architecture which parallels this (see next article for examples) produced partially with computer based "nonlinear methods" (pp. 84) - Nonlinear architecture implies a new design language of continuous variation; new language implies new metaphors/meanings in its use (pp. 84) - The main assertion is summed up as follows "New Science = new language = new metaphors" [of note: is the "=" identity or causation?] (pp. 85) - In this, architecture becomes a knowledge producing discipline, but the knowledge isn't just technical (tiling, structures) but aesthetic (metaphoric) - In this, Jencks claims that architecture becomes more "true to life," though this assertion is never supported nor fleshed-out - Land-form building is presented as exemplary of nonlinear building (covered further in the next article) (pp. 85) - Defined here as a "cynic-realism" which intends to rehabilitate the landscape tradition in architecture; emerges from real-estate speculation and takes-out further layered motives unto itself - Jencks proposes a compound definition of Complexity and proposes that it might only be an interpretation (narrative) of the world rather than an objective tendency (pp.87) - How organization emerges from components pushed beyond equilibrium to the point of chaos - At this point the system may "jump" or "bifurcate" in a nonlinear manner into a new organization which may be sustained by feedback or new energy input - Quality emerges from quantity spontaneously "Landform Architecture: Emergent in the Nineties" - Jencks presents Landform Architecture (AKA Landform Building, Cosmogenic Design, Nonlinear Architecture, Architecture of Emergence [see note 1]) as the most exemplary nonlinear architecture, providing a series of case-studies in its execution - Landform Building = a strategy for "handling a large volume of city building without becoming too monumental, cliched or oppressive in scale," through "architecture as articulated landscape." (pp. 88) - Proposed to be teleologically inevitable since opposite forces have converged on it (forces of Capital (real estate speculation) and "environmental forces" (wind, gravity, circulation) (pp. 88) - Examples tease out important aspects of Landform Building: - Jencks considers this architecture as research or experiment (Eisenman's Cincinatti University addition as "essay") (pp. 88) - Grace, interest, and elegance of design is more important than other concerns (see pp. 88, 91, 98 for example) - The design process in Landform Building must be legible (as diagrammatic representation or upon the surface of the building itself) - In Eisienman's Cincinatti University and Zvi Hecker's Berlin Jewish School there are both diagrams in the project package and colour-coding on the building itself [Jencks writes that this legibility is for "aficionados," students of architecture, and construction trades as an aid to assembly (pp. 91, 98)) - In re FOA's Yokohama Port Terminal, the "cinematic section" provides legibility to the continuous surface (pp.95) - Metaphor of complexity is present - Eg. "geological metaphor" in Eisenman (pp. 91), landscape "woven" of metaphor in Zvi Hecker (Jenck's writing on this is suspicious insofar as the landscape is ruined), the layered pop culture metaphors in ARM (pp. 101), the weedy plant in Ghery (pp. 102) - Landform building transforms dead matter into active "mutter" (the German pun should not be lost out in this); austerity of material into an artistic composition (pp. 92, 93) - Landform building's operativity is assimilation ("it must fit in yet be unmistakably other.") (pp. 98) - Each of the examples assimilates at various scales and on various terrains (aesthetic, scalar, the architects themselves assimilate [or are assimilated] to a specific kind of architectural discourse) - Landform building requires the computer as a generative tool (though Jencks is never specific in how the computer is used in this sense), often as a construction aid (though only laser surveying is mentioned directly), and as an optimization tool (pp. 91, 101, 105) - Computer programs enable the "approach [to] a condition of complete chaos" Hypersurfaces (1998) - Two articles on major pavilions which gained the critical eye in the 90s - Exemplifying the first wave of digical architecture (curvilinear, interactive, immersive, lines of movement) - Both pavilions act as interfaces to other media (via central computers): the former uses the building's infrastructure as interface (sensing environment), the latter positions a control panel interface inside the building as one system among many (plumbing, electrical, HVAC, more similar to contemporary thermostats) "Motor Geometry" -- Lars Spuybroek - Two sections: the first describes the contemporary state of being with technology, the second provides an example of architecture that responds to this new state of being - Argues that going beyond the primacy of vision towards the other senses (especially the "haptic") reveals that the individual human body is at the centre, structuring reality (109-111) Argumentation is as follows: - The body animates "mechanical extension" (read: technology) as a prosthetic extension of our skin, allowing fluency (pp. 109) - The "skin" [as a sensing field] must extend as far as possible beyond the edge of the prosthetic device into space to achieve this (pp. 109) - All actions, therefore, flow from the body outwards via the extended skin (a buffer zone or field) - All action and sense is haptic (feeling), and unconscious - The "buffer zone" skin makes reality since there is no outside space for action to happen, the body is purely self-referential (pp. 109) [NOTE: Leibniz's monads] - The body forms the space of its own action while also constituting itself through motion, through the continual processing of its own internal deportment - All there is outside the body is unstructured and only becomes structured information by passing through the body - [the body as purely processing with no intervening transmission, no sinks for data storage; the only possible data processing is denoising] - Spuybroek relates this to nomadicism in which the world may be assimilated to oneself through moving which restructures all outer events through relationality (connectivity) which is transformed into "form and action" (pp. 110) - Since all is processable through the field, there is no difference between senses (all are haptic), between spatial elements since all must be the same substance (see homological arguments in topology, also Spinoza) - Space is topologically mutable leaving the body as its only invariant [individual body as epistemological baseline] (pp. 111) - FresH2O eXPO, Zeeland, Netherlands, 1994-97 pavilion as exemplary of an architecture which emerges from this theoretical position - "Liquid Architecture" = making liquid all things that were solid in architecture; "soft and smart technology of desire" for immediate fulfilment of desire for accidental; anti-comfort & pro indeterminacy; "contamination with media" (pp. 111) - Achieved through: spline-based form, continuity of all surfaces, non-orthogonality, no view to the outside, tracing of movement through embedded sensors which control the pavilion's atmosphere of sound, lighting, and projection (pp. 111-116) "Salt Water Live: Bahaviour of the Salt Water Pavilion" -- Kas Oosterhuis - Description of the pavilion with focus on: - Media deployment as virtual extension (pp. 117-121), multi-modal atmosphere (colour-scape, sound-scape), computational control (even of outside interface) ["the hydra," 2X UNIX workstations](pp. 117, 120) - Construction of pavilion through "Parametric Design" - Method of design which ensures "both absolute control an absolute flexibility during the construction period." (pp. 121) - Use of a "three-dimensional database" attached to a 3D model (no details of this interface) with the builder only receiving details and tables of parametric values for CNC input and on-site use (pp. 123) - Building is not fixed representationally but fluid (pp. 123) Embryologic Houses(C) (2000) - One article by Greg Lynn which Carpo presents as exemplary of mass-customization around 2000 - Of note: none of the images are to a specific scale but take on an indexical aesthetic "Embryologic Houses(C)" - Embryologic Houses(C) = house design strategy which engages brand identity, variation, customization, flexibility of manufacture, investment in beauty and aesthetics (pp. 126) - Compare to Lynn's previous positions; the significance of the IP trademark (authorship) - Achieves this through geometrical systems with rigid limits which allow for continuous variation - Produces genericness but non-identicality, development of a "brand" through recognition and novelty (assimilation: fitting in but different enough & design as a subset of advertising) (pp. 126) - Kinship between variations but no originals or ideal models - Argument for this approach through demonstrating a change in production-distribution (pp. 126) - Modernism (kit-of-parts, assembly-line, limited advertising culture, undeveloped ideas of identity) contemporary (continuous variation, pervasive advertising, branding, highly developed ideas of identity) - [the implication that all identity is (or culminates-in or passes through a period of being) brand identity] - Details of the actual houses (they seem to be private houses rather than housing) - All variations have the same number of parts though each is unique (pp. 129) - Any change in a single part cascades to every other element through the manipulation of "control points" (pp. 129) - "linked to" CNC processes (water jet cutting, stereolithography, 3-axis milling) (pp. 129) - Two floors each at scale of a detached home (165 m2 - 295 m2 // 1800 sqft - 3200 sqft) (pp. 130) - Whole project follows the "topology of the surfaces" (windows work in the smoothness, the ground responds to the shell's geometry) (pp. 130) - Building site as autonomous from all others (from specificity of 30m diam. And the aesthetic of inter-plot borders) (pp. 130) Versioning (2002) - Two articles collectively authored by SHoP for a special issue of AD which marks a shift from form to process due to technical issues of constructing the forms proposed by earlier architects (pp. 131) "Introduction to Versioning: Evolutionary Techniques in Architecture" - "Versioning" [operative term or gestural concept] = describes shift from technology for image-making to technology for "open modes of practice," attitude rather than ideology [though it will be called an ideology elsewhere] (pp. 132) - Trans/inter-disciplinarity that moves in two directions though both centre the architect (architecture borrows tactics from other fields but also intervenes in other fields using architectural theory) (pp. 132) - An attempt to disengage architecture from "a stylistically driven cycle of consumption" (early-2000s anti-consumerism a la Ad Busters, compare to other architectural projects of autonomization) (pp. 132) - Shift from horizontal integration ("generators of form," the architect as one employee among many) to vertical integration ("driving how space is conceived," the architect as manager) (pp. 132) - Vertical integration as a "return" to an earlier idealized Renaissance master builder (pp. 134) - "set of conditions organized into a menu or nomenclature capable of being reconfigured to address particular design criteria" (pp. 133) - The computer as main tool that allows thinking design in terms of "procedure and outcome" that go beyond conventional design/construction (pp. 132) - Cascade of changes to law, liability, design partnerships which restructure power relations, accountability, responsibility (pp. 132) - Versioning relies on combinatorial geometry, allowing external influence which preserving precision (pp. 132) - Vector information (modelling, real-time feedback) over raster information (simulation, representation) - real-time evolution to produce specific effects or behaviours (pp. 133) - "Representation : modelling :: modelling : versioning" - All this allows for acceleration and adaptability of design process - Original/copy binary is irrelevant as architecture becomes more about finding means of production to address a changing condition than form (pp. 133) - Ability to address different kinds of time and their relation to cultural processes (pp. 133) - Intervening in the "city/machine" to produce a "self-regulating mechanism for cultural control." - Scales of practice relate to scales of design (small offices taking large projects, large offices acting small) (pp. 134) - Integration of design and construction to "keep all aspects of construction under control" (pp. 134) - Through doing away with trades and building it yourself (SYSTEMarchitects) - Through producing new kinds of instruction systems for assembly (David Levy) - `process product' & practice theory/theory practice to empower the architect [though keep in mind what architects do when there's no work] (pp. 135) "Eroding the Barriers" - Argues that technology is allowing for the blurring of boundaries between architect and builder through a series of case studies from SHoP's own oeuvre (pp. 136) - Dunescape MOMA PS.1(pp. 136) - Collapsing of surface, structure, and program into an articulated frame - Only two sizes of wooden members for ease of fabrication - Use of full-scale templates instead of scaled drawings for "fast tracked" construction [question of who built it and how] - Rector Street Pedestrian Bridge (pp. 138) - Stressing communication w/ city authorities and local community [a very high-income area] - Prefab box truss pre-approved by city for speed of assembly; ability to begin construction before the rest of the project was approved - Use of sequencing diagrams for assembly to speed up construction - Mitchell Park Carousel and Camera Obscura (pp. 140) - Focus on architects control of design process when working under public authority (as though public oversight prevents the full freedom of design) - Modelling of noise as driver for carousel design - Full-custom detail system spec'ed (hyper-control over details see Stan Allen) - For camera obscura, the drawing set is a set of assembly instructions (like a model kit) - NTS exploded axos are paired with scaled details - Information is etched directly onto all prefab parts (trace of process) - A-Wall (pp. 143) - Fully CAM and laser cut pieces prefabbed - Heterogeneous assembly approaches combine digital fab and hand assembly - School of the Arts, Columbia University (pp. 143) - Expansion of architects' role to feasibility study, municipal legal analysis, engineering analysis [question of how this changes the shape of the office] - Residential Condo (pp. 145) - Architect as developer (having skin in the game of profits on the building they design) - Relation with contractor and trades from the start of the design process Topological Architecture (1998 - 2003) - Two articles on Bernard Cache's office, Objectile, which give a general view of end-of-millennium design theory "Bernard Cache/Objectile: Topological Architecture and the Ambiguous Sign" -- Stephen Perrella (1998) - Perrella illustrates the state of critical architectural practices through Objectile's work (pp. 149) - Bernard Cache is presented as theoretical driver of office and "renaissance man" (pp. 149) - Argues that contemporary modes of production have affected a "topologizing of architecture" (pp. 149) - Due to computation, complexification of life - Puts architectural authorship in question - Involves reworking architectural theory through a kind of translexical translation - Cache's theory: "all form consists of either convex or concave curvature" (pp. 149) - Emerges from positing frame, vector, and inflection as fundamental geometry of architecture - Inflection = "ambiguous sign" (Leibniz), "geometric undecidable" [asymptote?] "which works outwardly from its centre" - Objectile's practice achieves the above through CAD/CAM (Cache was involved directly in the development of TopSolid [see CCA archive]) (pp. 149) - Specifically invested in the use of middle-range industrial modelling programs for architecture (as opposed to animation programs) (pp. 150) - Cache is interested in how form emerges from profit motive & how the "mainstream corporation" may be displaced (pp. 150) - Working within the boundaries of "dominant powers" to "challenge them" [does this filter into the organization of the practice?] - Attempt to place the means of production in the hands of consumers through accessible digital design and fab (hence the focus on highly optimized programs); the corporation would not have monopoly on production - "liberation from consumer culture" [read in relation to 1) Mitterand's Grande Projets, 2) 90's-00's anti-consumerism (DIY, difference as radical)] (pp. 150) - Through differentiation (rather than corporate sameness), which complexifies & richens identity - Cache's theory of "Subjectiles and Objectiles" [never directly defined, but alluded-to] (pp. 150) - Expands hypersurface theory (= the theoretical position of curvilinearity which deals with complex conditions through pliancy) - Uses a project for a textile museum to demonstrate the design of "objectiles" through investigating knots (pp. 151) "Philibert De L'Orme Pavilion: Towards an Associative Architecture" -- Bernard Cache (2003) - Cache presents Objectile's main aim as an office: to make digital architecture accessible to small architectural practices and the general public at an affordable cost [the end is important] (pp. 153) - Trying to approach a "fully digital architecture" with full interoperability between design and construction [zero latency] - Development of a single integrated software for all design/fab. - "associative design and manufacture" = all design procedures utilise a limited number of parent geometries which can be manipulated with all changes cascading through the design and manufacture controls - Cross-referencing of parts (naming conventions, indexing) and control programs - Presents the Philibert De L'Orme pavilion as the current culmination of their research (pp. 153) - Based on stereotomy (descriptive geometry) which Cache proposes as important for future CAD applications (pp. 153) [the implications of this] - Which will automate precision drawing of certain curve types (freehand takes too long) (pp. 154) - Detailed discussion of tools in use and the procedures for production (eg: panel routing and digital process) with no mention of program users (pp. 155) - Specific discussion of G-Code generation and CNC machining (pp. 156) - Assertion that all complexity should be located where it can be best accommodated to reduce labour time and difficulty (complexity goes in the software and digital machining) (pp. 155) - Mention of knot generation as a design tool in which mathematics can be used to parametrically control a design feature; stresses the need for invariants in a dynamic system (topology) (pp. 156) - Design of software tools as part of the design process (the software was written to cope with the specific issues of the project) (pp. 156) - Sums up by stressing that digital architecture is not the stylistic curvilinearity of modelling programs but the process of "architecture with digits" that has a stake in production (pp. 156) -Morphogenesis and Emergence (2004 - 2006) - Two articles that demonstrate the application of self-organization to design "Introduction to Emergence: Morphogenetic Design Strategies" -- Michael Hensel, Achim Menges, and Michael Weinstock - Emergence = intertwining of abstraction and means of production, [circular def. incoming] "the `emergence' of forms of behaviour from the complex systems of the natural world"; mathematical in basis which describes emerges as "Morphogenesis" [which allows design appropriation] (pp. 160) - Morphogenesis can be used as a design strategy (pp. 160) - Requires iterative approach with each iteration materialised as a physical model - Must include fabrication material's own self-organizing properties and the "industrial logic of production" - Means rethinking of buildings as complex systems embedded in an environment which have a finite life space and make up a teleological-iterative series which leads towards an "intelligent ecosystem" - Requires new form-finding methods that are capable of the intensity of adaptation for emergence - Examples that follow demonstrate various approaches to Morphogenesis in design; some elements which stand out: - Formal research "de-programs" building types (eg: pp. 160-61 "high-rise building" study has no program in it and focuses on the structural skin) - Main technique is through genetic algorithms as exemplary of iterative emergence (pp. 161-62) - Much of the research hinges on a division of labour in which students design and execute formal experiments in the studio (unpaid), and academics present these outcomes in articles and books (paid) (pp. 161) - Collaboration between architects and engineers [here, Ove Arup and Buro Happold] to work on elements that are formally articulated, aesthetic and structural (pp. 161-62) - Morphogenetic design as a means of dealing with "urban conglomerates" (pp. 162) - Urban conglomerates characterised by: complex, intensified social interaction; high population concentration - This must be "ameliorated" by design that "maximizes qualitative and quantitative factors" - Emergence allows for designing the interaction between multiple life cycles through integrating topology, structure, and program - Global control through local action - Integration of design and production in a feedback system (CAD-CAM integration) (pp. 162-63) - Source material presented on pp. 164 contain books and articles from psychology, engineering, "popular science," and cybernetics "Polymorphism" -- Achim Menges - Describes natural morphogenesis, then demonstrates its use as a design approach - Natural morphogenesis = process of evolutionary development which generates "polymorphic systems" through the internal capacities of the systems combined with external influences (pp. 165) - Produces hierarchies of simple components from which "performative abilities" emerge - Formation and materialization processes are intertwined and related - Normative architectural processes leave the inherent performative capacities of materials unconsidered, splitting design (formal exercise) and materialization (construction) apart in an artificial hierarchy [ie. the hierarchy is in the wrong place] (pp. 165) - The alternative is a morphogenic approach to architecture = unfolds "morphological complexity and performative capacity of material constituents without differentiating between formation and materialization" - Material systems as generative drivers of design process - Design through the inherent, innate performative capacities of materials - Form-material-structure closely interrelated - The rest of the article presents a series of relevant tools and methods all of which require computer support (though only abstractly alluded to) - Form generation through "soft control" techniques (pp. 166-68) - Soft control = local exertion of force at strategic points while allowing the system to self-organize in relation to those points (pp. 166) - Form finding = design technique which utilises self-organization of material under the influence of external forces (pp. 166) - Global form-finding process where soft control means setting up the boundaries of the system; few, small local changes/constrains - Differential actuation (pp. 169-171) - Global changes to a system through incremental local transformation (like infinitesimal calculus) (pp. 169) - Many local changes produce global stability and effects (pp. 169) - Component differentiation and proliferation (pp. 172-176) - Parametric components are defined by geometric relationships (base component is posited and then modulated) (pp. 172) - Base component is developed from the capacities of a material through physical model studies (since structural experiments don't scale) (pp. 172) - Creates a system with local, regional, and global manipulation potential which can respond to external influence (pp. 172, 176) - Generative algorithms (pp. 177-178) - Algorithmic fitting of a pattern to a surface which must take into account fabrication within the "fitting" rules (pp. 177-78) - Allows response to external influence/optimization through the ability to make every cell different while preserving the systems deportment - Digital growth (pp. 179-181) - Digital "growth" of geometry by subjecting it to a "digitally simulated environment of forces" (pp. 179) - Use of L-systems to specify how geometries change (see D. Hofstader's MU language as an example) (pp. 179) - Bottom-up process by which specific elements of a surface respond locally to the environment and produce an emergent whole; open ended process (pp. 179) - Proposal that this method will encourage a rethinking of sustainability and efficiency (pp. 181) Scripting (2006) - One Article by Malcom McCullough, the first Autodesk product manager for architecture in the 80s; view of architectural computing from the side of software devs. "20 Years of Scripted Space" - Provides an argument in favour of digital design tools, arguing that they bring design to a higher level through abstraction of complexity (pp. 183) - Proposal that digital tools are labour saving ("You have to get free of the Grind"); and change the division of design labour (pp. 183) - "Coders" program the means of processing forms, the "design professional" (this terminology is important) uses the programs to choose the right forms (designers as evaluators) (pp. 183) - Play as the main act of using digital tools (manipulation of rules in a freeform manner) (pp. 183) - Requires changes in outlook: 1) constraint is not bad; 2) computing is playful; 3) not all knowledge is computable; 4) computation does not always mean automation (pp. 183-84) - McCullough provides an abbreviated, insider history of computational development in architecture - 80's beginnings with AutoCAD's use of command line sequences for drawing (this is still a thing, typing in a sequence of commands, scripting) (pp. 184) - Relationship to "shape grammars" as a form of design knowledge representation (pp. 184) - Design software as "expert assistant" to the user rather than purely generative (pp. 184) - Movement from shape grammars to "parametrics" = expressing design problems computationally as a series of design variables (dimensions) (pp. 185) - Parameterisation defines the "essence" of the type (it's capacities) with each instance produced by filling in the variables (pp. 185) - Works best when there are fewer variables (taking many complex variables and making them as dependent on eachother as possible (pp. 185) - Development (with shape grammars) through architectural education (as opposed to practice) with little instruction in practical coding [see next note] (pp. 185) - Of note: McCullough does not like how architecture internalized spline modelling and sees it as a fad of practice and not research/education ("as an invasive species") (pp.185-86) - 90s GUI development mixed with spline modelling allowed architects to directly manipulate geometry, the software did all the backend coding and math (pp. 186) - Design states produced through "discovery" rather than formulaic derivation; improvisation over composition (pp. 186) - Parameterization as breaking down due to architecture as "wicked problem" (pp. 186) - McCullough proposes that programming (as coding) knowledge in arch. was preserved by educational institutions (and not practice); bemoans operating system trade-off [ease of use is traded for programming power] (pp. 186-87) - Announces a return of programming due to: 1) advances in digital fab to meet economic changes (supply chain capitalism); 2) theoretical basis of form expression from biology; 3) Information tech. changes organizational structures; 4) cultural focus on customization of work environments (scripting your tools) (pp. 187) Collective Intelligence (2006) - Two articles which respond to the internet as a participatory tool and the expansion of decentralized collaboration "Introduction to Collective Intelligence in Design" -- Christopher Hight and Chris Perry - Proposes that design practice and knowledge is profoundly impacted by the transition from the "second machine age" to "the information age" (pp. 189) - Computation, telecommunications, new political-economic formations suggest transition from distinct design professions to "international, transdisciplinary, decentralized practices": "collective intelligence" (pp. 189) - These practices allow for engagement with contemporary "problems, site briefs, clients, and manufacturing processes" (pp. 189) - Collective intelligence = dematierialisation of disciplinary boundaries forming a patchwork in which one field may be "enfolded" with another (pp. 189) [full def. from Pierre Levy] - roots in McLuhan's decentralized, collective social org ("global village") - Englebart's proposal for augmenting human intellect w/ non-human modes of production through communicate tech - both dystopian and utopian possibility - technical, social, political "professional"; becomes infrastructural rather than just a single tool - Manifests in relation to a change in how power operates [Hight and Perry provide a summary of Deleuze's "Postscript on the Societies of Control"]; from disciplining to controlling = Fordism post-fordism (pp. 191) - Cross-references these to Hardt and Negri's concept of "Empire" where biopolitical tech. produces centralized international networks of corporate power (pp. 191) - Proposes collective intelligence as a mode of Hardt and Negri's "Multitude" = forming The Commons through the same process of integrating and intensifying networks towards a democratic biopolitics (pp. 191) - Participants in these kind of communities are geographically dispersed and connected by intensified communicative/exchange feedback loops (pp. 192) - Produce information, platforms for exchange, and communicability as by-products [surplus value of the activity] (pp. 192) - Politically inclusive since they produce their own sites of organization (pp. 192) - In architecture: the integration of practical and academic knowledge - In the case of design products: the ability to embed "intelligence" or responsiveness in a tech/material system (pp. 194) - Integration of human predictive capacity w/ computational abilities of tech. into "hybrid assemblages" (non-humanist agency through connectivity and "molecular biotechnical power") - Two scales of collective intelligence: 1) design practice; 2) technology and product (pp. 198) - Intertwined scale; synthetic condition - Latour's social as a "topology of connectivity between a multitude of agencies" - Innovative design as novel forms of practice and knowledge production not novel forms (pp. 199) - "All design is the production of techniques of connectivity." "Computational Intelligence: The Grid as a Post-Human Network" -- Philippe Morel - Proposes a new idea of collective intelligence in design through the technique of grid computing (pp. 201) - Grid computing = distributed computing by linking discrete, geographically distributed computers into a parallel processing network - Produces a new kind of people in a post-urban "Ambient Factory" [similar to Tronti's "social factory" though there's no gesture towards this] (pp. 201) - Ambient Factory = organizations outsourcing their computation to home PCs which process data while they are not in use (or in the background) as a continuous surface of data farms (pp. 201) - Grid computing as connecting "multitudes" to each other but also connects computers to each other w/o human intervention (as pure infrastructure) (pp. 204) - Reveals that human labour was always simply a form of preproduction (and not production) - The only possible human labour after the turn to automation is conceptual labour (since it alone cannot be automated) - Legitimates the analysis of "multitudes" and human networks through technological lens by arguing that science (quantity) has displaced social forces (presumably quality) as the driver of all contemporary production (pp. 204) - Thinking collective intelligence then means looking at how it solves problems (presumably, how it deals with quantity) and that is a technological mode of problem solving (since the problems themselves are technological) - Morel proposes that this science-based production be called "Integral Capitalism" (merging of infocapitalism, technocapitalism, and biocapitalism) (pp. 205) - In architecture this all means applying tech and science in practice "in a flat model, beyond any representation" (pp. 206) - Uses a grid-computed chair as an example; stresses open-source tools (though makes sure to stress how open-source is a lucrative business in the footnotes [note 8]) - Expansion of collaborative practice beyond human collaboration Elegance (2007) - Two articles which cover the second wave of blob-itechture (digital smoothness) which conflate post-critical thinking with digital design "The Economies of Elegance, Migrating Coastlines: Residential Tower, Dubai" -- Ali Rahim and Hina Jamelle - Covers a residential tower proposal for Dubai, outlining that digital design is perfectly suited to maximize profit in a real estate market (pp. 213) - Through interactive fine-tuning and adjustment, their proposal: (pp. 213) - Creates variable unit types, allowing for expanded real estate opportunities based on quality of space rather than size - Units with different geometries for different prices to attract a wider range of buyers and to make the undesirable units sellable (pp. 214) - Reduces construction cost through economies of scale and new approaches - Cost-effective elegance - Operates to facilitate a series of migrations: - "foreign nationals seeking to invest" to Dubai (pp. 213) - Real estate speculation as local economic driver - Use of architecture effects as advertising for the building (pp. 214) - economic activity from city centre to desert periphery (near the building) (pp. 217) - to increase property value of building and provide buying opportunities for residents - migration of building components from international suppliers (pp. 214) - cheap components imported which enables cost effectiveness - Building as an economic tool above and beyond it being a place to occupy (pp. 217) "Deus ex Machina: From Semiology to the Elegance of Aesthetics" -- Mark Foster Gage - Argument that architecture has "been excluded from the discourses of the aesthetic" due to its need for signification, economic demands, and performance efficiencies (pp. 221) - Proposal that a return to artistic elegance [elegance as the operative term] will remedy the situation (pp. 221) - emerges from formalism as a means of providing it a greater narrative - formalism as being produced for "some future critical encounter" (produced for discourse and its continuation) - Proposal that architecture "needs qualifiers" to act as aesthetic aspirations rather than descriptors to provide narrative integration (pp. 221) - Elegance requires aesthetic expertise to execute (pp. 222) - The upshot of this is that architectural knowledge is aesthetic knowledge, architects as experts in aesthetics - Elegance produced through continuous, fluid systems which architects have expertly manipulated to form desirable mutations (pp. 222) - Mutation = not individuation, evolutionary technique for producing future anomalies, different enough to be a new type (species) but not different enough to be outside the system (assimilation) - Elegance requires calibration of the intensity of mutations which requires that architects be experts in aesthetics (see above) (pp. 222) - Consensus on technologies used to produce mutations (surface modelling software and the math that underpins them) produces agreed-upon critical standards (pp. 223) - Implication that anything that is not within the above discourse is not architecture - Criticism = aesthetic judgement (does it look elegant?) - The ability to have expert boards of critics (MFG uses the footnotes to draw a comparison between architecture and language by using The American Heritage Dictionary which was formatted in the same way: writers as language experts, descriptive permissiveness is regulated by "experts") - Cinematic experience of architecture through the continuous serial reading of "figures" (pp. 223) - Reliance on the visual over other senses; the flash of precognitive visual experience - Leads back to the architectural agency of desire (aesthetic) which drives commercial activity and provide architects with the tools to manipulate this desire (pp. 224) Building Information Modelling (2009) - An article on Building Information Modelling (BIM) which proposes its changes to architectural practice through digital integration "Optimisation Stories: The Impact of Building Information Modelling on Contemporary Design Practice" -- Richard Garber - Computer software has changed architecture in two separate registers (pp. 227) - Academic (theory) through visualization and formal novelty - Professional (practice) through management and generation of conventional docs. - Break between theory and practice through the disconnect between architects and construction trades (though Garber only goes as far as "contractors and subcontractors") (pp. 227) - Discontinuous process of manual doc. transfer invites misinterpretation - Argument that BIM is closing the gap, enabling the execution of more complex design proposals (the outcomes of theoretical exploration) (pp. 227) - BIM as amalgam of digital modelling, CAM, and management analysis tools - Allows architects to understand the realisation of their ideas better - Arises from need for better construction management - BIM = "a single, intelligent, virtual model [that] can be sed to satisfy all aspects of the design process." Shared and contributed by all parties involved in process, automatic coordination due to the nature of the medium (pp. 227) - Ability to think the construction process as part of the architectural design process (simulation and modelling of construction) - Merging of formal creativity with performance considerations through iteration and testing during the design process (rather than later in the field) - BIM capacities in contemporary practice: - Digital management through BIMs as databases which control, monitor and streamline design process (efficiency of time, materials) (pp. 228) - Means of evaluating design iterations against practical performative criteria [the physical world] (to solve the "stopping problem" in digital design, enabling a series of optimizations) (pp. 232) - Bringing design optimization into the design process earlier (BIM as, first and foremost a database which can take a diverse series of data inputs from the world) (pp. 232) - "digital assurance," changes in design and construction responsibility (pp. 232) - BIM as reconfiguring the role of the architect in the design process (pp. 232-33) - Puts the architect back in charge by making construction managers redundant - Architect goes from being one employee among many, responsible to the CM, to being the manager whom all other parties in the process respond-to via the BIM - Labour saving in the process of making design intentions communicable (rationalisation of novel forms) - Illustrates a transition between paradigms of professional practice: `possible to real' `virtual to actual' (pp. 237) - `possible to real' (pp. 237) - Formulation of design intention as cerebral activity, which is then documented as 2D abstractions of a building, which is then interpreted by others to realize the building - Impossible to guarantee preservation of architect's original design intent - Digital design software further disengages architect from construction (since modelling enviros are so distant from simulating the world) - `virtual to actual' (pp. 239) - No interpretation required since "digital information models are already inherently real" - A process of actualizing what was a virtual version of the building in a different medium (translation) A New Global Style (2009) - One article that covers "parametricism" and proposes its stylistic autonomy "Parametricism: A New Global Style for Architecture and Urban Design" -- Patrik Schumacher - Proposes "parametricism" as a new style rooted in animation techniques, parametric design techniques, and scripting (pp. 241) - Proposal that it succeeds modernism as hegemonic through overcoming a period of uncertainty [post-modernity] through having a better capacity for articulating programmatic complexity (teleological view of stylistic development) - Parametricism responds directly to post-fordism (= "heterogeneous society of the multitude...[]...proliferation of lifestyles"), an increasingly complex condition [assumption that now is more complex than then] (pp. 243) - Parametricism is a style since 1) it is a new collective project; 2) it has new ambitions and values; 3) it is worked on globally (note that this work is competitive); 4) it has long term consistency of shared ambitions and problems (pp. 243) - Argues that styles can be thought of as research programmes (pp. 244) - Interpretation of styles as scientific paradigms (as conceptual frameworks) - As in science, there are periods of development within styles and transition between styles - Stable identity as necessary for a style to hold its own (PS compares this to "organic life" but its more similar to markets) - Programmes consist of methodological rules (pp. 244) - Negative heuristics = what not to do - For P: no rigid geometric primitives, no simple repetition, no juxtaposition of the unrelated - Positive heuristics = what to do - All forms are parametric, gradual differentiation, systematic inflection/correlation - Parametricism only exits upon the back of computational geometry (pp. 244) - Five agendas of parametricism (pp. 247) - 1) "Parametric interarticulation of subsystems" = scripting relationships - 2) "Parametric accentuation" = amplification of deviation - 3) "Parametric figuration" = producing multiple readings in a single figure - 4) "Parametric responsiveness" = responsive environments - 5) "Parametric urbanism -- deep relationality" = treating urban environments as swarms of buildings which may be choreographed as a totality, integrating the other four agendas - A section on how parametricism is better at ordering than Modernity, despite its focus on ordering (pp. 248) - Since parametricism can simulate "material computation" ("natural" ordering processes) - Uses Frei Otto as an example - Urban space as an interface system which expresses pure ordering (pp. 250-51) - Demonstrates Parametric urbanism through Zaha Hadid Architects' unbuilt Kartal-Pendik Master Plan for Istambul