The Dangers of Parametricism

Wealthy Chinese Family with 'bounded feet'

Zaha Hadid's Istanbul city plan

It is said that parametricism has emerged, after the era of modernism and its many successive waves, as a new form of erotic ornamentation, one that have grasped upon the world as the new trend, the contemporary style. However, such overpowering aesthetics acts as a double-edged sword to its user, as the rigidity of such system meant that people are controlled unwillingly and unknowingly. The affect of the power of aesthetic of ornamentation can be seen in the ancient Chinese era, most notably in the Song dynasty, where middle to high-class citizen adopted a trend of feet binding as a mean of displaying status. The action results in a lifelong disability for its subjects, and yet, everything is done in the name of aesthetics.


Coming back to architecture, parametricism have been taking upon the world with the same level of forcefulness of foot binding to the ancient Chinese. The style is all encompassing, as have been said by Patrick Schumacher in his manifesto: “We pursue the parametric design paradigm all the way, penetrating into all corners of the discipline.
Systematic, adaptive variation, continuous differentiation (rather than mere variety), and dynamic, parametric figuration concerns all design tasks from urbanism to the level of tectonic detail, interior furnishings and the world of products.”

Computer-generated shortest tree diagram

One of the most well-know field that applies parametricism to its design is Zaha Hadid’s city planning. Adopting the aesthetics of a heavily controlled parametric spatial distribution and organisation, the plans are generated by computers using the most advanced computation technology to build cities that, for example, have its main nodes connected to each other by the shortest-path tree algorithm. Such system ensures the most efficient urban planning theoretically through the use of form-finding programs such as Galapagos which uses gene theory to calculate a certain set of statistics based on numerical inputs. Such system, however, ignores the human side of architecture, for example, Martin Heidegger’s Four Fold theory of Earth, Sky, Divine and Mortal. This means that residents in such city would be consumed by the dictatorial synchronisity of their environment while having their basic human qualities and needs ignored. Also, one should question whether the mimicry of natural system is an authentic one. The architect mimic nature as he/she understands it (with robotics and computational technology in its construct), therefore, the architect’s mimicry is taken as is of nature, and therefore, the architecture have the right to impose upon nature as much as the nature have the right to impose upon itself. One must be aware of such claims and to be cautious of believing it as the truth. Whatever it will be, if such system persists in the current fashion, it might collapse upon itself in a way similar to the destruction of modernism’s Pruitt-Igoe.

The demolition of Pruitt-Igoe representing the fall of modernism