Patrik Schumacher on parametricism - 'Let the style wars begin'

[M II A II R II K]

Patrik Schumacher on parametricism - 'Let the style wars begin'


6 May, 2010

By Patrik Schumacher



Read More: http://www.architectsjournal.co.uk/t...217211.article

In an exclusive text for the AJ, Patrik Schumacher of Zaha Hadid Architects argues that the unified style of architecture for the 21st century will be parametricism.

In my Parametricist Manifesto of 2008, I first communicated that a new, profound style has been maturing within the avant-garde segment of architecture during the last 10 years. The term ‘parametricism’ has since been gathering momentum within architectural discourse and its critical questioning has strengthened it. So far, knowledge of the new style has remained largely confined within architecture, but I suspect news will spread quickly once it is picked up by the mass media. Outside architectural circles, ‘style’ is virtually the only category through which architecture is observed and recognised. A named style needs to be put forward in order to stake its claim to act in the name of architecture.

The concept of style deserves to be defended

The concept of style has for a long time been losing traction within architectural discourse. To let this concept wither away would only impoverish the discourse, and a powerful asset for communicating architecture to society would be lost. However, the resuscitation of this drained and battered concept requires conceptual reconstruction in terms that are intellectually credible today.

What stands in the way of this is the tendency to regard style as merely a matter of appearance, as well as the related tendency to confuse styles with superficial, short-lived fashions. Although aesthetic appearance matters enormously in architecture and design, neither architecture nor its styles can be reduced to mere matters of appearance. Neither must the phenomenon of styles be assimilated to the phenomenon of fashion.

The concept of style must therefore be sharply distinguished and cleansed of these trivialising and distracting connotations. It denotes the unity of the difference between the architectural epochs of gothic, renaissance, baroque, classicism, historicism and modernism.The historical self-consciousness of architecture demands the revitalisation of the concept of style as a profound historical phenomenon that can be projected into the future. For this purpose I have proposed that architectural styles are best understood as design-research programmes, conceived in analogy to the way paradigms frame scientific research programmes.

A new style in architecture and design is akin to a new paradigm in science; it redefines the fundamental categories, purposes and methods of a coherent collective endeavour. Innovation 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 long, sustained cycles of innovation, gathering design-research efforts into a collective movement so that individual efforts are mutually relevant,spurning and enhancing.

[uaarkson]

Awful. Yet another inhuman architectural fad that will fade over time.

[village person]

I don't mind it when it's an intelligent consideration of function and context melded in good balance with its sculptural qualities. What I don't like is how commonly new buildings seem to be just another experiment in "let's see what habitable spaces we can carve into this weird shape!"

Anyway, more on-topic, I do kind of like this name for this style. I hope it catches on.

[kool maudit]

there is nothing inhuman about this style.

[M II A II R II K]

Too bad we can't have more gothic and classical.

[Uptowngirl]

Originally Posted by M II A II R II K

Too bad we can't have more gothic and classical.

Agreed.

[Bedhead]

1) Only Philip Johnson is allowed to come up with names for new styles.

2) He's already given this one a name - deconstructivism.

[M II A II R II K]

However the Gothic and Classical is from another time. If only the new and more recent stuff could be just as elegant and artistic.

[slide_rule]

i thought zaha hadid's style was a lot of retro googie mixed with a dash of deconstructivism, and it was presented as fresh and exciting?

1.
http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2448/...c2ee082436.jpg


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http://farm1.static.flickr.com/158/3...4bc5dd483c.jpg

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http://www.8ways.de/gandb/journal/posts/themebldg.jpg

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http://www.britannica.com/blogs/wp-c...8/01/hadid.jpg

schumacher wrote:

In my Parametricist Manifesto of 2008, I first communicated that a new, profound style has been maturing within the avant-garde segment of architecture during the last 10 years. The term ‘parametricism’ has since been gathering momentum within architectural discourse and its critical questioning has strengthened it. So far, knowledge of the new style has remained largely confined within architecture, but I suspect news will spread quickly once it is picked up by the mass media.

some very similar futurist architecture was built in roadside california and the desert states throughout the 50s and 60s. 'googie' was all about trying to attract the motorists' attention through hypar and butterfly roofs and basically pushing the boundaries of reinforced concrete. of course googie never claimed to be classy. it also fell out of favor for the next forty years before people began to appreciate its architectural merit. as an aside, i met wayne mcallister, the somewhat famous googie architect at LA international airport in the 90s. he seemed genuinely surprised that a then-young person would be interested in architecture that had been roundly dismissed for generations.

yet people are gullible enough to take 'parametricism' seriously. style is style and comes in and out of fashion. zaha hadid would have been anonymous if she did not have the support of some serious money for PR and financing. for many years she didn't have the commissions rolling in, yet still was exalted by compensated spokespeople.



the zaha hadid/retro googie style will come and go. architecture is like fashion, with folks like hadid and hilfiger and all the other overhyped celeb designers/starchitects peddling the supremacy of one style over another. of course it all changes in a few years, but the promotion of style takes precedence over everything else.

[jetsetter]

Originally Posted by M II A II R II K

However the Gothic and Classical is from another time. If only the new and more recent stuff could be just as elegant and artistic.

Architectural, like other forms of art, is timeless. A building built in the Gothic style today is not a building with an old design, just a building with one style among many.

[M II A II R II K]

Those old styles today even though the building is not old can still be a good thing, thinking of many of the boring concrete and glass buildings that go up now.

With no columns, statues, setbacks, engraved letters, that sort of thing.

[Duffstuff129]

Originally Posted by kool maudit

there is nothing inhuman about this style.

Agreed, like this style, humans are often confused, wasteful, and generally unattractive.

Zing.

[vid]

Originally Posted by M II A II R II K

Those old styles today even though the building is not old can still be a good thing, thinking of many of the boring concrete and glass buildings that go up now.

With no columns, statues, setbacks, engraved letters, that sort of thing.

The problem is that when we try to build things in historic styles today, we cheap out and the result looks like shit. Old buildings had carvings and engraved letters because it didn't cost as much to produce such things because those skills were more common. How many engravers are there in the Henderson's Directory today? Not to mention the cost of stone is probably higher, especially when compared to something easy like EIFS.

[M II A II R II K]

The future may involve computers with robotic chisels in factories to carve these things out and become cheaper.

One can wonder if this style never became less feasible if we would still be building such style today.

But of course there are recent skyscrapers that are impressive and appealing in their own right, other than boring boxes.

[vid]

Originally Posted by M II A II R II K

The future may involve computers with robotic chisels in factories to carve these things out and become cheaper.

They'll still be more expensive than a styrofoam mold of the same thing.

[M II A II R II K]

Well as I said before that architecture is of another time. Why can't new artistic and impressive masterpieces be created today.

[vid]

I have no idea what you're saying, Mark. You're flipping back and forth between "I sure wish they would build more traditional architecture today" and "Traditional architecture is past us, why can't we have new architecture?" and it's impossible to have a debate when you keep changing what the debate is about and what side of it you're on.

[ardecila]

I'm just gonna go ahead and call BS on Schumacher... I'm leery of a guy that Zaha Hadid hired as a "personal theoretician". He's essentially paid to come up with intellectual-sounding stuff behind Hadid's largely intuitive design process.

[M II A II R II K]

Should Your New Buildings Look Old?


May 16, 2010

By Lawrence Biemiller



Read More: http://chronicle.com/article/Should-...gs-Look/65488/

He wasn't the first person to imagine a college occupying a matched set of buildings grouped around an open space, but the matched set he created at the University of Virginia set the bar almost impossibly high for every campus since—a half-size, red-brick Roman Pantheon connected by colonnades to 10 pavilions, each architecturally distinct but all of them gloriously classical and beautifully detailed. His hope, Jefferson said in a letter asking the architect William Thornton to contribute pavilion designs, was that the pavilions would be "models of taste and good architecture, and of a variety of appearance, no two alike, so as to serve as specimens for the architectural lecturer."

What happened instead, however, was that the lawn's red brick and white classical trim came to represent a Georgian ideal of campus design for countless American college trustees and presidents—a dream so enticing that in the past hundred years it has been given a run for its money only by the Collegiate Gothic fantasy that arose at Bryn Mawr College, Princeton University, and elsewhere in the early 20th century. But as ideals go, those two—the Georgian and Gothic—have been almost nothing but trouble since the Great Depression. For any number of institutions, they've been at the heart of a question that has bedeviled presidents, trustees' building committees, architects, alumni-magazine editors, and everyone else: Must a college's new buildings look like its old buildings?

Many, many people think they should. Intuitively, that seems to make sense—and perhaps, in fact, it does, in some small settings. But the campuses of Jefferson's republic are littered with bad buildings that were designed to imitate or blend in with their older neighbors. Some of these copycat buildings are merely bad in an ordinary background-noise sort of way, but some of them are cartoon-grade terrible, especially those from the 1950s and 60s. And just about all of them, it seems to me, are intellectually indefensible.

Jefferson surrounded the lawn at the U. of Virginia with a half-size Pantheon and 10 red-brick pavilions with classical columns.

[M II A II R II K]

Gothic Architecture: 25 Incredible Photos


Jul 12, 2010

By Adam Tod Brown

Read More: http://designcrave.com/2010-07-12/go...edible-photos/

Gothic architecture evolved from Romanesque architecture and flourished during the high and late medieval period. Easily identifiable by its frequent use of ribbed vaults and pointed arches, it is most widely seen in the great cathedrals and churches of Europe. Many fine examples of Gothic architecture remain throughout the world with some of the larger buildings being classified as priceless works of art. Here are 25 awe inspiring examples of Gothic architecture.