The Politics of Parametricism

Digital Technologies in Architecture

Matthew Poole, Manuel Shvartzberg, Matthew Poole, Manuel Shvartzberg

• Publisher: Bloomsbury Academic
• Year: 2015
• Print ISBN:
  9781472581655
• eBook ISBN:
  9781472581686
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Architecture
• Subtopic: Architecture General

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.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Contents
• List of illustrations
• List of contributors
• Acknowledgments
• 1 Introduction
• 2 The historical pertinence of parametricism and the prospect of a free market urban order
• 3 On numbers, more or less
• 4 There is no such thing as political architecture. There is no such thing as digital architecture
• 5 Parametricist architecture would be a good idea
• 6Play Turtle, Do It Yourself. Flocks, swarms, schools, and the architectural-political imaginary
• 7 Breeding ideology: Parametricism and biological architecture
• 8 Speculation, presumption, and assumption: The ideology of algebraic-to-parametric workspace
• 9 Undelete: Recreating censored archives
• 10 Disputing calculations in architecture: Notes for a pragmatic reframing of parametricism and architecture
• 11 Parametric schizophrenia
• 12 The architecture of neoliberalism
• 13 Parameter value
• 14 Spinoza’s geometric and ecological ratios
• Bibliography
• Index