Week 10 Readings

Practice vs Project – VI: Parametricism vs Parametric Thinking

The architectural relevance of cyberspace is a critical analysis of how cyberspace and the computers on the Internet and which applied to almost any virtual spatial experience created in a computer. The emergence of cybernetic and computer is starting to erased the social and commerce interaction from physical space to cyberspace. With this in mine, this transition of physicality in the virtual world is allowing us to extend our mode of operation in the physical world “Virtual worlds should not be seen as an alternative to the real world or a substitute, but as an extra dimension which allows us a new freedom of movement in the natural world”(Frazer 1995, p.49). This shift is effecting not just how we see the future but also is a new advancement of seeing the past, bring us to the point of self-consciousness to unself-consciousness and linear relationship to complex web. John Frazer also mention a key point about the ephemeralisation meaning that the technology advancement to do "more and more with less and less until eventually you can do everything with nothing”.

Parametricism is the great new style after modernism, which Patrik Schumacher is known for. Schumacher mainly primary concern with surface and ornaments that expressing social order that indicating what the purpose of the building is. Ornament is a comeback through technologies by using varies digital tools and processers, he cast a key moments about the need for “tessellation became an opportunity for articulations”(Rivka & Oxman 2014), a component that is repeated slightly and modify driving the curvature to becomes the parameter.

Reference List:

• ·      Frazer, J 1995, The Architectural Relevance of Cyberspace, in M Carpo (ed), The Digital Turn in Architecture 2013, pp. 48-56.
• ·      Schumacher. P 2009, Parametric Patterns, in Rivka and Oxman R (ed), Theories of the Digital in Architecture 2014, pp. 143-152.